I'm going to say something that will make sense to the Fandom Olds and will probably be slightly controversial to the younger crowds, but I'm going to say it anyways

TPTB becoming increasingly aware of fandom and fanfiction over the past two-ish decades and thus, the spawning of the expectation of your ship going canon has ruined fandom a little bit

I mean, fandom does a great job of ruining itself a lot of the time, but this idea that a ship isn't "real" or "valid" if it isn't canon

or the idea that one ship is superior to the other because one is canon and the other isn't?

it's absolutely bananas

I grew up in an era of fandom where characters didn't even have to be from the same media source to ship them. I mean, do you know how many BtVS/HP crossover fics I read back in the early 2000s???

That shit was never gonna be canon, but we had fun with it, anyways

Like. Yeah, a lot of fanon speculation is bullshit, but it always has been and always will be. You have hundreds and/or thousands of people riffing off each other, the observations and the meta will always be deeper than what TPTB intended, and that's okay! That's what makes it fun!

I just think more people would be a lot happier in their fandom experiences if they realized that fandom is supposed to be an escape instead of a crusade

I don’t mean to be rude; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.

It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they won’t usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was designed to be the opposite of The Last Jedi

You’re all sitting on the hot take of the decade tbh

And yet when they fond out that boys were watching MLP:FIM in droves, they had NO PROBLEM with it.

#SONS OF ANARCHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!#LITERALLY SONS OF ANARCHY IS THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS LIKE EVER#kurt sutter wrote that show for MEN and ended up with an overwhelmingly female audience#because he’s actually a good writer and knows how to develop characters well and wrote excellent female characters#but once he realized that his audience was almost entirely women he literally took it out on tara and gemma in the show#but like tara specifically#he resented her character for being a huge draw for female viewers so he tore her development to shreds and killed her#in the most brutal gut wrenching way possible#kurt sutter you will pay for your crimes#i actually wrote a manifesto about this on one of my old blogs i should try to find it sldkjsldfjsdljf#long post (via@m-oonknight)

OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like “Hey folks, this girl’s getting us more viewers, let’s put her in more scenes!” It just doesn’t make sense to me. MEN don’t make sense to me.

The 100 too. I’ll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.

Star Trek from TNG on was also a boy’s club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, “Women don’t understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.”

I think it would be harder for us to find examples of when this DIDNT happen than when it did. It happens all the time.

Doesn’t stop it from boggling the mind

(though it could probably start to make some sense if you follow the money past audience bases to maybe a couple of investors or like a rich patron … 🤔)

Stooooop I just wrote a masters thesis on this shit. Media creation and distribution is a means by which dominant power structures consolidate their hegemony. Dominantly situated creators get upset when the audience they attract isn’t the audience they wanted, because they view the whole creation and sharing of the fiction as an exercise to sustain kyriarchal conditions that benefit themselves. When the audience is Other, they see it as a failure of those efforts and lash out.

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

(anyway if anyone wants to read 35k words of philosophy about this, hmu)

i've had so many conversations with people in fandom/creators' circles who are genuinely afraid to make the stories or art they want because they fear (often with good reason!) that their friends might kick them out of their circles, or worse, launch a public harassment campaign against them.

as someone recovering from this fear-based mindset, i want to affirm:

- friends who use implicit or explicit threats to maintain social control are not your friends

- communities that monitor your social media and ao3 to surveil you for perceived transgressive content are not safe communities

- the vast majority of people are NOT going to hate you if you make the art you want

- if you find yourself in a friend group that makes you feel afraid to speak your mind, it's in your interest to disentangle yourself from that group as quickly as possible

- real, honest disagreements between friends can be solved respectfully without the use of public shaming

- if you're feeling afraid in a community, it's likely that others are feeling afraid too. support your friends who may be struggling to leave an abusive fan or creative community, and let them know you're a safe person to voice doubts and disagreement to.

- if you're feeling like you'll never find a safer community of people, i promise there are others who feel that way too. it may take some time, but you'll find people who treat you and your ideas with respect. a good place to start is the people who make the type of art that you admire but that you're too afraid to make yourself.

ok that's all, take care of each other and be nice 💜

not now sweetie, mommy is watching how the massive girlbossification of female characters has led to the belief that weak and vulnerable female characters are badly written characters because apparently every woman needs to be outspoken and witty and snarky and brave in order to be considered “complex” and have any value in a piece of media!!

(video)

guys i need you to be less comfortable making super negative comments abt a character in the tags of a random post abt that character. like i support haterism but make your own post. please stop and think about whether op, a person who is interested in this character enough to make posts abt them, wants to hear all that. i see this too much from people reblogging from me and it makes me embarrassed that you’re reblogging from me. you are being rude

#fandom is so much more pleasant #when you figure out where to be a lover #and where to be a hater #don't hate in places where other people are loving #let people love things in their own posts #i promise you will survive the terrible burden of shutting up #and taking your haterism elsewhere (via @majestictortoise)

the key to not fanonizing your faves is to simply become academia-brained about it. never make a statement about a character you can’t back up with at least three references to the source material

An open Tumblr letter to younger fans, from a 77-year-old TOS fangirl

* who has shipped Spirk since that night in 1967 that Amok Time first aired * and helped storm NBC to keep TOS on the air for a 3rd season * and wrote fanfic way back in the day * and was privileged to be around for the earliest days of fandom, when Leonard used to come to your house if that’s where the fan club was meeting and sit on the sofa with you in that Spock hair cut and eat cake

All of you who are writing TOS/AOS fan fiction and creating fan art now: remember, YOU are the ones shaping the traditions of fandom. You have inherited the kingdom. Bless you for keeping it vibrant, growing, alive. In fifty years, you will be the ones who are remembered for molding it and handing it down to the future. It probably doesn’t feel like now, but you are making history.

Your current addiction to TOS and the feels you get when you contemplate the love between Jim and Spock will be with you for life. It won’t always be in the forefront; you will sometimes go years, sometimes go a decade, without Star Trek being more than a passing thought. But then something will remind you and every consuming feeling you feel right now will come rushing back, every bit as powerful and deep and strong as it is today. All there, right where you left it.

The friendships you make in fandom will be with you for life. Like all friendships, they will wax and wane as the focus of your life shifts over time, but you will always be able to pick up the thread. You will — to give you a hypothetical example — be 77 years old and discover Tumblr and get a rush of Spirk feels after a decade of not giving TOS a thought, and contact your 83-year-old fangirl friend in the nursing home, to whom you haven’t spoken in several years. You will open the conversation with, “So, Jim and Spock love each other and that just makes me so happy.” And your friend in the nursing home will sigh and say, “Yes. They do love each other. It’s such a comfort.”

That look that Jim and Spock give each other, of absolute adoration and acceptance and love? That’s real. It’s rare, but it’s real. One of my greatest joys in life is to see my son and his husband give each other looks like that. Of course I don’t know you; I don’t know your strengths and struggles or your place on the spectrum of gender or anything about your sexuality or what you look like or what your life has taught you to believe about yourself, but I do know this: YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED AND LOOKED AT THE WAY JIM AND SPOCK LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Please don’t accept less than that in your life.

The future of our planet does not seem very hopeful at the moment. But please remember that when Gene created Star Trek, the world was in turmoil and the future seemed very bleak. Star Trek is, was, always shall be about hope. Reach for it. When TOS first aired, we hoped to see some form of a Starfleet on the horizon in our lifetimes. That vision must be passed on to you. Do it. Make the world worthy of launching the human race out into space. CREATE STARFLEET.

You are all creative and funny and amazing. Far more amazing than you know. Be kind to yourselves. Live long and prosper, kids.

Tags are in reference to my first bullet point. Meant as a kudos to your work, but feel free to untag yourself if you don’t want to be linked to my ramblings; I won’t be offended! (Also, this extends to a thousand other artists and writers out there who deserve kudos. tag at will.)

There comes a time when fandom becomes less of an escape from anxiety to being the source of anxiety. Sometimes I need to remind myself what’s important to focus on, and I made this chart to help me with that. 

(Posting this at the request of a few people. The design/concept was inspired by an instagram post about covid-19 located here). 

"I don't like the fandom content this person posts!"

Then unfollow them.

"I'm not following them, but they're in all the tags!"

Then block them.

"I blocked them but all the people I follow reblog their posts!"

Then unfollow those people.

"But I like their other content!"

Then add the person's username to your blocklist.

"But—"

No. Stop. Listen. You cannot control what other people post or how they interpret your favorite characters or what ships they like. All you can control is your own actions and your public responses. Block them, filter out their username, then post your own stuff to carve out a space for yourself and people like you in your fandom. You will be a million times happier if you focus on what you're doing and what you enjoy instead of on the people you don't like.

sighs

okay this may be little too specific but. rb this and put in the tags a character you get defensive over. not as in “they deserve better” but as in “i know them better than anybody else does” <3

look, fandom as a whole certainly has its own built-in biases and problems that need to be addressed 

but like

every so often i think about all of the deep, nurturing lifelong friendships that only ever happened because one day two internet strangers were like ‘oh hey, we agree on which fictional characters should kiss!’

people who are right now helping each other survive via connections they initially forged by liking the same sailor moon girl or something

the internet is a goddamn garbage pit but it is also a goddamn miracle

i'll just be controversial and say discord is not real social media. it's a fine communication platform but it is not Posting! saying you're gonna move to discord is like saying you're gonna move to facebook messenger get outta here

I mean I think people should curate their own fandom experience and whatnot and it's perfectly fair to just avoid things one is uncomfortable with...

That being said. From personal experience? Immunizing myself to all my discomforts by browsing through pixiv and kink memes with raised eyebrows while searching for things I am interested in back when tagging was non-existent has really made my fandom experience much more pleasant nowadays.

I have preferences, for sure. But I have no fear. I have no cringe. The filthiest, grossest fanwork holds no powers over me. I am a god.

Like honestly dl;dr and block on sight is respectable and all but I genuinely think everyone could just benefit from purposefully exposing yourself to your nOTP and non-triggering squicks sometimes? (And obviously don't go bother the creators for it.) If only so that it makes it easier/safer to search for content you like without living in fear of accidentally glimpsing something you hate and having that ruin your day.

Training oneself to be comfortable with mild discomfort is a highly under-rated skill in this day and age

I think its interesting that "desensitized" is a dirty word now. Like...when I did my therapy, being desensitized was the GOAL. It was the fucking dream.

But also, desensitization essentially gives you the agency to say, "okay so that felt bad, now I can either put it away, really explore and understand what that discomfort is trying to tell me, or discard it." Idk...some of yall are so fucking distressed all the time and you call it "being normal" or "being a decent human being" but...it isn't normal to be distressed all the time. It isn't decent to be distressed all the time. And like...I have disords and chemical shit going on in my brain but if you don't have all that....I think you need to look at your distress and ask why it is actually enduring and who benefits from you being distressed (lessons from a pre-bush era american).

honestly worrying how many young people i meet who refuse to engage with any type of media that asks them to think critically. any piece of media with any bit of problematic content is immediately written off as bad, irredeemable media that must not be analyzed under a critical lens because that would mean parsing out authorial intent, context, and whether or not there's anything to be gained from even bad media. as a writer i would say that i learn as much from bad writing as i do from good writing - it teaches us what works and helps fill in gaps in our understanding when we allow ourselves to actually engage with it. but we don't do that, do we? we want everything to be simple cookie cutter black-and-white morality. we can't stand to think of anything more complex than that.

i met someone recently who said they only watch children's shows because adult shows are all the same. "it's all about stupid relationship drama and everyone is terrible." what are you even talking about? maybe if you only watch shows and movies produced for the masses (marvel stuff comes to mind immediately) but there's so much more complex media out there aimed at adults if you wanna look beyond what's popular (because the things that are popular are only that way because they don't ask us to examine things critically). i could equally turn around and say that children's shows are shallow cookie cutter storylines with no character development or moral complexity because i've only seen children's shows that are aimed at the masses, but i recognize that there's more media out there that i haven't seen.

and this isn't even the first person i've met who says they only watch children's media. i keep meeting people who only consume the sort of disney-fied heroes journey easy black-and-white morality story and are super uncomfortable with anything that asks them to examine situations in which life might be less simple. i've been told it's problematic to like horror because it glorifies killing people, as if the horror genre hasn't been used to explore some really complex themes. but that's the problem i keep coming back to in this post, isn't it? there's a growing trend of people who shy away from any sort of discomfort in media. and it's not good for them. yeah obviously you don't have to engage with anything you're not enjoying or anything that's triggering to you, but i really think that only consuming pleasant unchallenging media really limits your ability to think critically and handle situations that might provoke a little cognitive dissonance. please broaden your horizons.

I also think we have a problem where men are chronically uncomfortable with complex narratives about women. Male anti-heroes are allowed to do morally dubious things and we're expected to sympathize with them even when they're usually awful to their wives and children. But then you get men who won't empathize with characters like rebecca bunch from crazy ex-girlfriend because she's a "crazy stalker" when the narrative is asking you to understand the complex ways that the world effects women's mental health. I've seen men write beth boland from good girls off as a bitch after only seeing a few out of context episodes (a guy literally said she deserved to be cheated on because she cheated on him first which...uh...is the exact opposite of what happened and she's doing all she can to keep her family afloat despite having a manipulate lying husband who is far less competent than she is).

Men look at these narratives and feel that they're "man-hating" somehow and refuse to empathize with the realistic situations these women are in. The situations presented in good girls and crazy Ex-Girlfriend aren't female power narratives the way that male anti-heroes are, and yet the same men who glorify walter white won't take a second to see moral complexity when it comes to female anti-heroes. I even hesitate to call them anti-heroes when so many male ones these days are just abusive murderers and the female ones are usually just women either taking on traditionally male roles or having complex motivations that don't serve men. And you may think these readings wouldn't matter, but as a woman with bpd, I feel that any man who is willing to call rebecca bunch a bitch after only interacting with a few out of context episodes would have no trouble calling me a crazy bitch when I do something they don't like without even bothering to ask if I had a reason for it. It's about empathy and putting ourselves in other people's shoes and acknowledging that in life good people make bad choices.

YES. But I'd also say those characters can be bitches. But like ... that's not the worst thing in the world. Its FUN to watch. Assertive. Take no shit. Leave a trail in their wake. Sometimes good sometimes not so good. Selfish.

They are bitches and I love them very much. I say it with ALL the love in the world.

They are also fake people.