very curious anon that loves watching drama from the outside but never gets involved-
so, both elriels and gwynriels are completely certain they're right, and they make so many theories and long posts and all that jazz but... eventually the book will come out and then we'll see who got it right... and i'm just so curious about how the fandom will react!! obviously some will celebrate and post "told ya" and some will go ia for a while or bitch about it, but what about those accs that made in depth analysis? like yours for example, there's not that many accs that do it but some of y'all (on both sides) really seem to know your stuff yk.
and i guess that in my head i can see the stans that make a few comments and for the most part just shit-post get over it easily, but the ones that got really involved, either emotionally or intellectually (that's not the word but you get what i mean) ... looking forward to see how that turns out.
anyway, i just think it's funny that i'm more interested in how the "losing" side will react than the actual result haha.
no but for real i think it's fascinating and someone should make a study on fandom culture and shipwars🤭
I think that people already do study this stuff! (I just did a quick search in my university library website for the word "fandom" and it came up with 27k results.)
I don't think that people understand the lack of my caring about what happens in canon. The thing about this fandom that has been increasingly annoying is the way that everyone is OBSESSED with canon.
And when it comes to shipping, I almost could not care less. Literally nothing will happen in canon that will make me ship e*riel. If it becomes canon and they end up fucking for 800 pages, I will hate every single second of it. Then again, I also hate lysaedion, and it took me forever to get on board with elorcan, I am kinda meh on feysand after acosf. Nessian is pretty good. Rowaelin is OTP. I still finished the books and enjoyed other aspects of them besides the ships I didn't enjoy so much.
The things that I post are analysis of the book content that we know is canon, that we can analyze. I was an English major. I know literary criticism. I put that knowledge to use in fandom. GAH I still need to finish my post about how to do that in fandom. But I can guarantee you that not a single course I took asked me to analyze what would happen next in a series that was not yet complete. Not a single professor asked me to find "foreshadowing" in a book without having read the entire book or series first.
Personally, the fandom has driven me to make statements that I wouldn't have ordinarily. Y'all can ask @aelin-godkiller and @rayonfrozenwings, both who have known me in this fandom since early 2017. I have never liked theories because they are a shot in the dark. But now, everyone is SO OBSESSED with being right that it's driving me crazy. A few months ago someone asked me for proof that elucien would be endgame, and I said no. I'd still say no. I have very strong feelings in one direction, but I also know that sjm is going to do whatever the fuck sjm wants to do and we are just an unpaid part of the Bloomsbury marketing team.
I like meta. I like literary analysis, aka the analysis of the content that we have and that we know is true (in the loosest sense of that word, since we have to account for reader interpretation.)
I can predict what will happen when the next book is announced and/or comes out! There will be people saying "this was OOC!" or "sjm doesn't know her characters!" or "sjm wrote this for fanservice!" It's just a page from the fandom playbook when things don't go people's way.
Ok first - wow true we are unpaid marketing and I know this but also, I hate that everytime I talk about this I’m just doing their work for them. The ship wars benifit them - SJM and her books are still on your radar and our lips 6mths later.
And secondly, I totally could have written this anon, I feel it - I kinda also want to get the popcorn. I’ve been here so long now I feel like I have to see things through.
Thirdly - My top post is a theory one from 2017 back when the fandom wasn’t divided in ships and across platforms. Theory. With about 1700notes. That’s huge! Unheard of today. Only art gets notes that high! Or shit posts. We may think fandom is “big” at the moment but it’s kinda just a few vocal people in their small subsets.
But yeah - predicting is hard work. I’ve only ever seen one theory that someone wrote come to fruition almost exactly and that was Maeve being Valg in tower of dawn. Technically me saying worlds were connected has kinda been proven butttt not exactly 100% right so I’m not calling it yet. Hahahaha. But I write theories for fun - I love the endless possibilities that come with writing them. People trying to write fics that follow on from canon are doing the same thing they just are doing the math in their beards instead of sharing it with the class.
I am TIRED Renée, TIRED of the ship war that I just don’t actually fucking care about!!!! Because this is fandom!!!! Where canon goes to die and we dance on its grave!!!!!!
I totally agree with you about the fandom size, though. Maybe it has shifted to other platforms, but tumblr also provides a specific type of fandom experience that just can’t happen elsewhere, so... Every now and then someone will find an old post of mine, like those body swap ones, or random Mor & Cassian brotp headcanons, and it’s amazing how many notes and how much engagement those got. Compared to now, where it’s mostly a few small(er) groups of people who get so triggered by the existence of other shippers that they act like complete imbeciles online. I might be vaguing some people right now, iykyk
I write meta for fun, too. It’s not about being right or guessing canon correctly. Literally the only reason I stick around is because there are huge parts of this fandom that are really fun. Those parts just... happen in private now, in discords free of bullies. And that’s unfortunate for the rest of the fandom, because they are missing out on a lot of discussion that happens behind the scenes, since people don’t feel comfortable saying those things in public.
I hate that I had a typo at the end and you reblogged it and now it is there forever.
It’s a thing now - people do the math in their beards.