@treepyful / treepyful.tumblr.com
people trying to insist a fandom is tiny when it /only/ has a few thousand works on ao3 meanwhile my current fandom is a sixteen book series and has several hundred fewer works than goncharov, a movie that, and i cannot stress this enough, doesn’t even exist
Sometimes. The "het" ship is more compelling than the yaoi. I know. It's crazy. But it's true.
Sometimes people will be so scared of the concept of "straight" (read: m/f) relationships that they end up shipping a far less compelling yaoi ship instead because hey at least it's gay.
Or there is the even more confusing phenomenon of trans-ing a character's gender for the sheer purpose of not having to have a "straight" ship. Not even for the sake of exploring the gender of that character but simply because it HAS to be gay or else it is objectively worse in their eyes.
That's not even to mention the amount of times that this strange assumption that all m/f relationships are het (and of course thus "bad" on some scale) that it results in the erasure of canonical bi characters? An example of such is Cheleanor (Chidi and Eleanor from The Good Place) being referred to as a "het ship" or "straight ship" when Eleanor Shellstrop is very much canonically bisexual.
And then there is this sort of shame around thinking that maybe the m/f pairing is good actually? Like it's a net loss to some degree?
And I've been there, I've done these things but. Looking back? It comes from a place of a lot of biphobia.
M/F relationships are not your enemy. A man and a woman being in a relationship is not your enemy. Acting as such just isolates entire swaths of the LGBTQ+ community, not even just those under the bisexual umbrella (though even if it was just mspecs that should still fucking matter!)
Hell!! This weird sort of fear of the concept that someone could be straight was a fucking centerpiece of Ace Discourse!
Of course there are medias where the M/F relationship is rushed or not well established and put there for fuck-all reason except for the fact that it's "expected" but that does not mean that is the absolute standard of M/F relationships within media!! There is a reason that MSR (Mulder Scully Relationship) was what essentially started shipping as we know it in the first place!
M/F ships can be well written! Shock of all shocks! Continuing to act like the problem is that they're a man and a woman and not the writer's misogyny (internalized or otherwise) just serves to harm your own community!!! And also! Really hurt your media comprehension abilities!
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
has anyone else ever had a fanfic that just... haunts them? like it's been months and maybe even years since you read it, but it just lingers with you and you can never truly leave behind the imprint it made on you? and maybe it's just a single line, one sentence that you can't shake off, that takes up residence in your mind and stays there, feeding into your psyche and subtly influencing your brainspace and maybe even your writing or other works?
“what’s posted on the internet stays there forever” is true for everything except that one piece of fanart you saw when you were 10 that changed the trajectory of your life forever. you will never find that again it is gone forever
i think we as a community need to be done using terms like “bottom” and “pillow princess” negatively, even as a joke, because it’s not a joke anymore in so many spaces. I saw a young lesbian earnestly ask what a pillow princess is in a queer forum and all of the answers were negative, every single one. i’m so tired of people calling real people and fictional characters bottoms as an insult—again, usually as a joke—and it’s so common in fandom. why are you labeling characters bottoms as a method of mocking them? genuinely ask yourself why a queer character or person receiving sex is so funny to you and why the punchline is that it’s somehow demeaning to receive acts of queer sex and consider the many layers of homophobia and even misogyny that have built the foundations of that seemingly harmless joke.
genuinely some of y’all make posts that read like hateful graffiti uncovered in Pompeii
This is a slow fandom zone
None of that "Oh no they bomb-dropped all the episodes in a week 1 month ago, I'm late!" "The tag hasn't been active all week is the fandom dead?" "I only got a hundred shares the first hour no one cares about my art"
Slow down
Take a deep breath and slow down
Fandom is YOU. And me and everyone. If we doodle stick figures for a show that ended 30 years ago we aren't "late" or "doing too little", we're playing dolls in our own time and having fun with works of art that mean a lot to us
You can literally watch and engage with something that aired in 2004 as if it aired yesterday
If the tag hasn't been active for 14 months guess what? If YOU post there, it isn't dead. Literally you can talk about anything you want whenever you want there is no weird law against watching things that people aren't actively talk about
Let's be deranged about stories together
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 💜
A reminder for you and a reminder for me: fic is a hobby, not a requirement. I don't need to write a certain amount to be "doing it right" and neither do you.
one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.
which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:
and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts
a lot of really annoying media discourse on tumblr comes down to people having a hard time accepting that both of the following are true at the same time:
people who let me wake up to this get a special place in heaven. firefly_fox how does it feel to hold my life in ur hands....
my favorite thing about this post is that a handful of people have gone "oh wait! this is tangible proof that i don't need to be embarrassed about leaving a lot of comments!! i'll stop being so ashamed!" YES!! ao3 authors basically universally will die for people who comment spam. we love to see it and we do not find you weird or annoying At All.
think about it this way: we ourselves are weird enough to have spent several hours, days, or Months writing down this story. we are weird enough about the content to do that! why on Earth would we be mean and judgmental toward people who care enough to get excited about reading it?? we shared it Specifically For You To Get Excited About!
WE WILL WRITE FOR YOU WHEN YOU DO THIS, TOO.
As someone who has legit written fics because of the joy that receiving comments brought me, yes
me, watching my mutuals post ceaselessly about a fandom i’m not in:
Hot fandom discourse take but framing dark content as only being acceptable if its a vehicle for exploring personal trauma is just giving ground to the puritan segments of fandom.
Simply liking dark content for its own sake is perfectly fine.
You've heard about the Madonna/Whore complex, now I propose Mary/Medea: a fictional mother must be an absolute perfect selfless saint whose identity revolves solely around her children, or else be a selfish abusive demon with no redeeming qualities whatsoever
My feelings on the slash ships vs male friendships argument that occasionally pops up is that if other people shipping two male characters with each other genuinely ruins your ability to appreciate the intimate male friendship depicted in canon, that says a lot more about your personal anxieties and insecurities than it does about shippers or culture at large
The argument is typically about devaluation of friendships, right? that imposing romance/sex on these canonically non-romantic, non-sexual relationships between men implies that friendship without those elements is "lesser" or "not enough"
And I am sympathetic to a fruatration with devaluation of friendship and I do agree that the language shippers use or the argument they put forth in favour of why their ship is a valid reading of the text or going to become canon or whatever, that this is sometimes language or arguments that imply the superiority of romance and sex over relationships without those features
But the thing about it is that
1) the canon version of the relationship in question typically is a non-sexual, non-romantic one, the mainstream version of this story is one that puts emphasis on and values male friendship, which is prove in and of itself that there is no danger of stories about the importance of male friensships drying up
2) this is an issue far, far more prevalent in the depiction of relationships between men and women, like there actually is a lack of stories that center non-romantic, non-sexual male-female friendships, there genuinely are people who see every non-familial male-female interaction in the light of romance, yet it's the slash ships that get hit with this accusation of devaluing friendship
At the end of the day, how other people interpret a piece of media really doesn't have to affect your own relationship to a piece of media. It's perfectly fine not to like a ship! It's not homophobic to prefer a male friendship to a gay romance. Getting angry about other people engaging "incorrectly" with a fiction relationship is immature and in the case of the "devalueing male friendships" argument it is also homophobic
I have a straight male friend who really values Frodo and Sam's friendship and who doesn't personally read it as romantic, who indeed is a man with intimate, non-sexual, non-romantic relationship with other men and thus find that interpretation personally meaningful. But he's not immature or a homophobe, so he doesn't feel the need to complain or argue if someone else makes a reference to them as a couple in his presence. We all agree that the relationship is important and endearing, why would we have to agree on the particulars of whether they fuck or not?
If you find shippers annoying, that's perfectly reasonable because shippers often are annoying (I say as a shipper). But at the end of the day, the only reason to position slash interpretations and platonic interpretations as enemies is homophobia
