I had thoughts about the acotar fandom and fandom etiquette and I'm not sorry.
I genuinely wonder if people wandered into the acotar fandom last year, after having read acosf, and didn't understand what corner of the internet they ended up in. Fandom is inherently very queer, in the broadest sense of the word. In the Judith Butler sense. Not just that there are gays everywhere, but there are disabled and neurodivergent and minoritized identities. We are here looking for more from canon, not just reinforcement that what we thought about canon was right. Fandom has existed for a long time to give stories to people who never saw themselves in the story, or who felt constricted by the mainstream, who felt like there wasn't a place for them in the media they consumed.
So when I see the acotar fandom being snide about "crackships" - though that's not an insult, it's just a description of how likely the pairing is in canon - and when I see the acotar fandom acting like shipping is a political stance/social justice cause, or when I see this fandom not understanding that you can ship things that have not been confirmed on the page, I have to wonder - where do these people think they are???
The most important thing about fandom imo is that there are no rules other than the number 1 rule: you are in control of your experience. That means that you block tags, or people, or follow tags, or people, or create, or consume, or whatever it is you want, but you cannot try to force your version of fandom on anyone else. If you don't like how someone else is engaging in the fandom, you block them and move on. It's that simple. There is no such thing as fandom police, it's every person for themselves. If you personally cannot stand the idea of Elain and Mor, then block that tag. If you really feel incredibly strongly about it, then block the people who use that tag. It's super simple, and it's been fandom practice for... literally decades now.
The acotar fandom has actually made this rule quite difficult in the past year because, for example, I have blocked upwards of 150 people on tumblr, and yet I know that some of those people continue to stalk my blog and make posts vaguing me. I've made my boundaries clear, those boundaries have been disrespected, and I know I am not the only one who experiences this. At least two times, people have taken me blocking them as a "challenge" to still try to interact with me despite the block. Thus far, my choices are to either attack those people head on, or act like they don't exist. I quite like pretending that they don't exist because those people are a waste of my time. However, I am not the only person they do this to and I know that turning the other cheek isn't that easy all the time, especially when certain people are so aggressive about being assholes.
The fact that people get mad at other users blocking them, that just baffles me. Again, blocking people is a time-honored and necessary tradition in fandom. You do not have to scroll through content you don't want, and having a presence in the fandom doesn't mean you have to allow all people access to your content! "This person blocked a bunch of us so we can't interact!" Yes, well, that's the point! They have drawn a line in the sandbox, you are not entitled to interact with whomever you want, and you should definitely respect the fact that someone has, for literally whatever reason they want, decided that they don't want to interact with you. The audacity of people getting mad about being blocked - is that harming you, somehow? Is that preventing you from screaming whatever you want to scream on your own blog? No? So what's the problem, exactly?
no 👏 one 👏 here 👏 owes 👏 you 👏 anything 👏
Disrespecting people's right to ship or headcanon or imagine whatever the fuck they want is another way that this rule continues to be violated. People are allowed to dislike/like whatever they want. Again, this is all about the only rule, you are in charge of your experience. Shaming people for what they like - whether it's a fluffy crackship or an abusive rarepair - is not okay. If you don't like something, then it's on you to block the content. It's not on you to show people the "error" of their ways because that's literally the opposite of why we are here!
It is not okay to tell other people how to exist in the fandom, and this moralistic high ground that people are taking in order to justify their shaming of other people is especially not it. That's the exact rationale that people are now using to say that in certain schools in the U.S., the idea of queer people existing is verboten. Why, oh why, do people think it's okay to come into one of the queerest space on the internet, and start throwing around morality-based arguments, when those types of morality-based argument are being used IRL to silence us??? Because people ended up in fandom and had no idea where they were (and apparently, still don't).
We exist in fandom (in part) because we already feel like there isn't a place for us in the mainstream. We are not going to allow a bunch of people who are so stuck up their ass in heteronormativity and whiteness and canon, to tell us what we can and cannot ship in fandom, a space that was historically made by and for queer people.
Example: if you don't like a specific ship, then you block that tag. The end. Maybe you talk about why you, personally, are not into it. We all have squicks. but you do not shame people for liking it, or try to tell them how and why it's bad that they like it. There is a HUGE difference between saying "here is why I don't like this" and saying "no one should ever like this!"
Fandom has etiquette, including tagging things appropriately, but the flip side of that is the understanding that tagging is a privilege, not a right. Fandom functions on the assumption that we are each looking out for one another by tagging content appropriately, but the second part of that assumption is that we do not tell one another what to do - if someone breaks rule number 1, then you decide if that bothers you or not. You cannot force them to comply, but you can block their ass. This is only tangentially related, but still relevant. It's still part of the whole "you are in control of your own experience" rule that we all live by.
I guess the whole point of this is to say: live and let live, y'all.
If someone draws a boundary, respect that.
Learn how to draw your own boundaries.
Stop being so freaking stuck on canon because that is not why we are here.
And have a gay gay gay gay day.
