This is something I’ve been mulling over for a while now, but I think I know why the whole ‘anti’ thing on here never really had a snowball’s chance in hell of ensnaring me, at least not as an adult. Because my approach to fandom and fannish activities is fundamentally different than that of a substantial number of younger people on Tumblr. To them, fandom’s both primary and overriding function is that of an activism space. Whereas either twenty years ago or now, my approach has always been:
Fandom is for pleasure.
I’m not saying that it can’t or shouldn’t also be a space for activism – it often is for me as well. What I’m saying is that my primary motivation when approaching fannish activity isn’t activism in and of itself. It’s being pleased. The two aren’t diametrically opposed. To wit:
I ship queer ships because that’s what pleases me, that’s what makes me happy;
I scowl at love triangles and write polyamory instead because I had shoddily-written, eye-rolling-inducing, heteronormative love-triangles shoved down my throat for years and now can’t stand them, whereas poly ships make me grin from ear to ear;
I read and write about politically powerful, complex, conflicted, morally gray women because I love them and went through a dearth of them in far too many mediums
So on and so forth. You might be wondering why I’m even pointing this out and going ‘both roads lead to the same thing for you, same difference.’ Not exactly – and Tumblr itself is amply showing the difference. By not basing my approach solely on a form of activism, I’m effectively not limiting myself in the kinds of things I read or write or enjoy. Not all my queer ships need be all fluff and sunshine and rainbows and healthiness. Not all my women protagonists need be shining beacons of morality (most aren’t). I’m a lifelong educator when it comes to consent culture, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to renounce my ravishment fantasies, either in my head, my reading or when practiced in the consensual, communication-first environment of a kinky relationship.
The difference came into sharp focus for me a few months ago, when a post written against the Prince Lotor/Lance pairing of Voltron went something along the lines of ‘shipping this abusive ship is bad because it’s horrible representation for MLM!’ The bedrock assumption underlying the whole thing was that all fannish activity had a moral duty to exist for the express purpose of validation and good representation. Therefore Lotor/Lance wasn’t seen as something in bad taste, to give an example, but rather as a moral failing. This clashes head-on with my own approach, because I’ll ship healthy, meant-to-aspire to dynamics when they please me – but I also go for messy, broken, terrible ones when they also please me.
For me, the overriding question in fandom isn’t ‘what is the most Perfectly Progressive Thing here so I can focus on that.’ It’s ‘what’s the Thing That Pleases Me Most in here.’ That the progressive things largely end up overlapping with what makes me happy is due to my experiences with marginalization and all its associated shit. This, however, doesn’t change the fact that the non-overlap section also includes other things that do it for me (that cater to my kinks, to my darker preferences when it comes to fiction, etc).
The disconnect, I think, comes from the fact that for me (and other older people who’ve also done a lot of hands-on activism work out in meat-space) fandom has always been a place to temporarily break away from how bleak and fuckingexhausting activism can get – to relax and unwind and just lose ourselves for a while, when our IRL projects seem to just be spinning their wheels in the mud. Fandoms that are nothing but activism spaces, where everything must be sanitized and pre-approved and healthy and Pure are a nightmare for me specifically because it would mean I’d have to live my life primarily as an activist 24/7, until I’m completely burnt out.
However, a lot of young people on here haven’t done any on-the-ground activism work – their first meeting with activism was on the Internet and in fandoms and the only place where they could stretch their legs as activists was fandom. Therefore, they take this one step farther and naturally view fandom as primarily a place for activism. I don’t even have to describe how horribly that clashes with what I described above – you can see it at work on Tumblr every day, in the myriad of posts going ‘how dare you ship this?!’ or ‘how dare you get off on that?!?!’ or ‘how dare you support this kink!’
This is why it’s so difficult for a lot of people of my age to find any common-ground with antis. Our starting points are radically different and even when we have more in common than different in regard to fannish preference, we’ll still never see eye to eye, because whole sections of this place have taught themselves that it’s a supposedly horrid thing to approach fandom from any angle that’s not based on a very strict, narrow sort of morality.
So much this.
And a lot of the rhetoric doesn’t help, because the rhetoric is full of shit like “well people who ARE [marginalized identity] don’t get to take breaks from this!”
Except that, like. For JUST a personal example: as a queer, disabled, neuroatypical, mentally ill woman? I am most often here to get away from having to deal with being all of those things. (And sometimes, sure, that does in fact mean writing about people who do not share any of my identity markers because then I get to stop thinking about this shit.)
I want to read a trashy shippy piece of fiction without having to think about the realities or the underlying power dynamics or whatever the fuck, and sometimes that means just … ignoring them for a while. Among other things.
So no, you cannot make that assumption and you cannot make that blanket statement. Often we are here to try and take a break from dealing with that shit. It’s not simple.
Suppose there was a species that was very peaceful, very good at diplomacy and just generally very nice— but they also happened to look really terrifying to humans. Sort of an opposite to that ‘humans are cute space orcs’ thing— species X is perfectly friendly, but just happens to look like they walked out of a human horror movie.
We don’t blame them for it, it’s not their fault (and we’re slightly too afraid to talk to them about it anyway) we just quietly avoid ships where they are stationed and stay away from areas where they live and, over time, it just becomes accepted that, for whatever reason, you don’t put humans and species X together. Captains turn down human applicants if they’ve got a member of species X on their crew and visa versa. They barely notice that they’re doing it, it’s just how things are done.
Then one day a human crewed ship breaks down in species X space so that one of their ships picks up the distress signal. Being such lovely people, they offer to help and the humans can’t think of a good enough excuse to refuse.
The repairs take about a week and, the whole time, the species X crew members are loving the human ship. It’s so spacious, you barely even see other crew members! (They don’t realise that all the humans are constantly ducking out the way whenever they see them coming.)
The humans, meanwhile, just spend the entire week in Hell. The species X crew members like to take shortcuts through the ventilation shafts, so you can constantly hear them skittering around above your head; the ship is full of this low key but very distinctive smell— rotting meat, the smell of death (apparently they give it off when they’re happy); half the crew have goosebumps, despite the temperature controls working perfectly.
The ones working in the engine room directly alongside the species X crew have it hardest though, they can’t run away— and it’s very hard to relax and do your job when, suddenly, you hear this noise above your head and a hairless, milk white creature with no eyes and a huge mouth filled with razor sharp teeth and long gangling limbs with fingers and toes that look human but like they’ve been stretched, leaps silently with catlike grace from the rafters, lands right next to you, flicks out a forked tongue, holds out a long taloned hand and asks “can I borrow your spanner?”
Ok yes I agree but you’re forgetting the type of human that loves creatures like that they’d probably fangasm upon netting species X and/or do their best to get one as a mate.
There’s an Arthur C. Clarke book that has a very similar premise, unfortunately to link it would be to spoil it X|
You know, in a horror movie, everyone always responds with a flight response when they see the monster. But that’s not the only thing that happens when people get scared. I want to see someone choose the fight response. I want to see a character turn around to see the killer right there, scream in terror, and start punching them in the face repeatedly.
The first time I ever got to participate in and enjoy a scary thing of any kind was a zombie LARP set up like a haunted house. I can’t do regular haunted houses or even scary movies because my fight or flight response is permanently set to DESTROY THREAT ON SIGHT. Restraining that impulse is incredibly taxing and leaves me with a overwhelming sense of helplessness, not fun at all. But in the LARP they gave us foam weapons and armor, put us in a spooky maze with gruesome zombies, and told us to go to town (within reason.) It was AMAZING, highly recommended.
yeah, i have always been ‘run toward the screaming’ guy as well.
also, as someone who has lived in suburban and rural areas a lot, i always roll my eyes when poor ol’ dumb farmer bob sees something out in the cornfield and promptly sets off to find it, possibly with a rusty old double-barrel under his arm.
look, if you think it might be a coyote stalking the chickens or a bear digging in the garbage, you don’t sneak up on it. you turn on all the outside lights (and yes, your random kansas farm does have floodlights that cover the whole area around the barn and outbuildings, and they’re bright as hell), wake up somebody else for backup or stay on the phone with animal control, and make a shit ton of noise the whole time you’re investigating. bang doors. whack empty oil drums with a 2×4. you’re not trying to catch a spy, you’re trying to spook a wild animal out of wrecking your stuff.
of course, your horror filmmaker can then have the grumpy farmer, satisfied there’s no coyotes in the barn, stomp back to the house, only to get chainsawed in the kitchen or whatever. but at least he wasn’t acting like ‘omg i heard a noise’ was an unusual or insurmountable difficulty on rural land, for crying out loud.
and i dunno how common this is, but – ok, you know the thing where someone thinks their friends are playing a prank, and they hunch around going “guys this isn’t funny” until they get jumped? i know i’m not the only one who reacts to such a situation, instead, by announcing “sing out or find your own way home, jackass,” and firmly marching to the car and locking myself in, turning on the engine and the lights. in my case it was a graveyard, which meant when i turned on the high beams i could very easily see mister spooky prankster hunching ‘behind’ a headstone like he was taking a dump. i laid on the horn. he fell over.
like, i’m a good sport, but this is a public outdoor space at night, hobos sleep here. no, i’m not going to play naked victim when i’ve got a two ton hunk of metal at my disposal.
i figure, once upon a time, when horror stories were new, people didn’t really spend a lot of time contemplating how they’d defend themselves or escape from a threat. but it’s all in the collective consciousness now. you could be stalking the blondest, bikiniest camper in the whole spooky woods, find her flooding her engine in the most helpless of stranded panics, and still not be sure she wouldn’t react to your gruesome visage by pulling a tire iron out from under the passenger seat and whacking your face off.
a sad day for monsters, my friends. horror is turning into adventure and there’s nothing the monsters can do about it.
god bless you lady cause these white ppl out of hand
If modern art is supposed to challenge the viewer by posing the question, “What is art, really?”, it needs to be prepared for viewers to answer that question.
Art: what is art, really? Cleaning Lady: not this
I’ve said it before: if scattered trash is a legitimate art installation, then cleaning it up is legitimate performance art and she should also get thousands of dollars for her incisive commentary
just moving along like everyone else 