Tag: fandom

To an extent it’s a problem with fandom: the fact is that you’ve got thousands of intelligent people thinking about a problem, and statistically speaking some of them are likely to come up with something more clever than the creators. […] There comes a point at which, frankly, fandom IS better than the creators. We have more minds, more cumulative talent, more voices arguing for different kinds of representation, more backstory… The thing is that I rarely get involved with a show without a fandom anymore, because I actually enjoy the analysis and fic and fun more than I enjoy the show itself. Similarly, I get drawn into shows I otherwise wouldn’t really consider by the strength of their fandom. And I want the shows to live up to their fandom, but it’s an almost impossibly high bar, because the parts of fandom I choose to engage with are often parts that wouldn’t be considered sufficiently accessible or relevant to a majority of viewers. So… basically, for me, fandom is primary, and canon is secondary. The latter is really only there to facilitate the former.

glitterarygetsit, in a discussion on fan responses to media on facebook

#this is the first time i’ve really articulated this #and i was quite pleased with it #this is the thing: i care so much less about original material than i do about fanworks

(via imorca)

On the one hand, sure – fandom of mediocre art tends to be better than the art, or at least more interesting, because there are a lot of creative nimrods out there who didn’t go to professional expressing themselves school to have their sharp corners sanded off – but for the same reasons fandom of good art tends to degrade its subject, because fandom (taken collectively, as this  person does) is only interested in telling certain types of stories and can only understand certain character archetypes, meaning that fanwork of property A (absent names, eye color and haircuts) tends to be indistinguishable from fanwork of property B.

But that’s not what this person is talking about, is it?  They’re not talking about fandom the mass entity – they’re talking about the outliers, the long tail.  “I engage with parts of fandom that wouldn’t be considered sufficiently accessible or relevant to a majority of viewers”, they say, inversely snobbing it up.  Far be it from me to speculate about the particular itch this person has, this content which is nowhere to be found in popular media except in certain pieces of fanfiction and “analysis”, but I suspect it doesn’t have as much to do with complexity or quality as it does with recognition, with finding a shared point of view which is otherwise shut out by mass culture gatekeeping.  

Don’t say that fanart is better executed or smarter – it’s not, in the vast majority of cases.  Say that it’s honest.  Say that it’s real.   Say that it exceeds commercial art because it does effortlessly what learned craft only achieves at the highest level, which is to reflect the soul as it is.   But remember that the animating spirit that makes it all work – the relationship the fanartist has with the setting and characters – is only there because some poor striving fucker made those up.

(via some-triangles)

flarewarrior:

zomblequeen:

Favorite trope 348234: when person who nearly died wakes up in hospital bed, looks around, sees the object of their affection asleep in a chair next to them because they haven’t moved in days

I’m so fucking guilty of this trope in like everything.

The Szechuan sauce fiasco proves Rick and Morty fans don’t understand Rick and Morty

simonbitdiddle:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

sadcoresean:

The third season of Rick and Morty began with a convoluted story in which series villain Rick breaks out of prison before breaking up his daughter’s marriage. There’s also a huge battle that includes many Ricks from other dimensions as the story folds back over itself and past seasons, and the whole thing ends with a wonderfully nonsensical speech about how this all happened so Rick can get more of a promotional dipping sauce from McDonald’s.

The joke, which plays with the show’s theme that Rick is empty, alone and despondentdespite having everything he could ever ask for, is that all that work was done for a silly, arbitrary reason. There is no plan, and there is no meaning. It may as well be a dipping sauce.

This flew right over the heads of some of the show’s biggest fans, and McDonald’s stepped right up to take advantage of this fact.

McDonald’s is struggling. It’s an older brand that has become synonymous with low quality and disposable culture. Sales are down, and the new CEO needs to get them back up. So why not turn to the internet?

What started as a silly joke about Rick’s hollow soul became a marketing opportunity, and the best part was that McDonald’s didn’t have to pay Adult Swim anything to cash in. The promotion was never officially tied into Rick and Morty in any way, although McDonald’s did everything it could within the bounds of the law to connect the two brands.

“Look at that art, look at the font,” Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon told Polygon. “Look I’m not being sarcastic when I talk about this. If anyone from McDonald’s is reading this, I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing and clearly neither does their legal department.”

But of course the fans revolted. McDonald’s either underestimated demand for the sauce or tried to manufacture scarcity of an old product that was already meant to be promotional — the sauce was originally supposed to tie into the Disney film Mulan — and ugly scenes broke out as fans waited in line for hours only to be told that their location was out of the sauce.

This is a weird situation for everyone, because Adult Swim had nothing to do with the promotion, nor did anyone from the show itself get a heads up about how McDonald’s would try to take advantage of the joke. McDonald’s, for its part, didn’t seem to understand what it was tapping into when it leaned into this gag.

No one was prepared for the enthusiasm of Rick and Morty fans, who are already getting an online reputation for, believe it or not, narcissism and toxicity. And they took that toxicity out on McDonald’s employees, who had little idea of how bad their day was going to get.

Rick and Morty superfans, the ones who are giving the rest of us a bad reputation, like to “joke” about how you have to be smart to understand the show while proving over and over again that they don’t understand the show. Rick wasn’t saying the sauce was important, he was saying that nothing is important. Why not destroy a family over a sauce? Why do or don’t do anything?

The fans responded by giving the subject of that joke an absurd amount of importance in their lives. They felt real anger over not getting their sauce, and they don’t mind taking it out on McDonald’s.

It’s funny because McDonald’s is attempting to reference how Rick talks without paying the creators of Rick anything while making both brands look bad while also highlighting how quickly online fandom can turn into angry mobs in real life. OK, maybe this isn’t funny at all. Maybe the whole situation is sick, and you’re right to feel a little sick when you read about it.

Because the fans don’t understand any level of what’s going on. If they understood Rick, they wouldn’t care about the sauce because no one in the show really cares about the sauce. It was never referenced in the show again. Dan Harmon himself explained to us that the line was put there just to rip on co-creator Justin Roiland’s love for the sauce. If they understood Morty, they would be kinder to the McDonald’s workers who didn’t ask for any of this.

And if they understood the point of the show so far — that living only for yourself is destructive and selfish no matter how smart you are — they would be ashamed at how they’re acting.

But these Rick and Morty fans don’t understand anything about this situation. Not the way commercialism stepped in to cash in on nihilism, nor the irony of how they’ve given something intense meaning and value after being told by a fictional character that it had meaning as a way of illustrating that nothing has meaning.

They’ve turned into Fight Club fans who start their own fight clubs, not understanding that the point of the movie is how easily white male anger is co-opted for violence and mindless support of empty and hateful causes.

And they’ve done this due to their love of a show they think makes them look smart or that they feel justifies their loneliness. Maybe they’re not alone because they’re so intelligent, maybe the problem is that they’re the kind of people who would get mad at a fast food place for not having enough sauce. The problems in their life most likely begin and end at that fact.

I don’t watch this show, but this entire trainwreck is fascinating to me

I’m waiting for the next fandom to go full-out separatist and try to establish their own town. 

The Szechuan sauce fiasco proves Rick and Morty fans don’t understand Rick and Morty

lullabyknell:

Do you know what cracks me the hell up? The idea that an author or artist or you yourself got “seduced” by a new or different fandom. Like, just… the mental picture cracks me up. Like, I’m seated at the dinner table in my nice house, raising several nice WIPs with the personification of the fandom, who is my spouse. It’s the perfect setup for a seduction. 

Like, you know, there’s this really hot neighbor who’s looking more than a little tempting and one day, this other fandom winks at me and gives me a smoldering look, I just sort of… sidle out the door and sneak over the fence. I don’t leave a note or show up to dinner that night; my old fandom has no idea what’s happened to me until they look over the fence and spot me happily domestic with my new fandom and pretending not to know them. 

Or I’m out having fun and wham! New fandom, from nowhere, hot af and suddenly there’s clandestine make-outs happening. Like, oh we shouldn’t do this and I already have a fandom, I can’t cheat on them like this. And it’s like some affair, where I won’t admit that I even know the fandom or meet their eyes in public, but every once and they’ll call me up and say a few sexy lines and I’ll sneak away for a night or two of wild fun with another fandom. 

Or my friend introduces me to this new fandom and our eyes meet and there’s instant chemistry. They french dip me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. And later, after a quick divorce with the old fandom, said friend is remorselessly and gleefully giving a toast at my quickie wedding with the new fandom because there’s already a WIP bun in the oven. Damn enabler, I say fondly, as they simultaneously demand to be named godparent and point out that the best man’s kinda hot too and clearly interested. 

Or maybe life is going on as usual, then suddenly there’s the screech of a car pulling up to the curb. It’s my childhood-friend slash high-school-sweetheart slash college-lover slash ex-spouse of an on-again-off-again fandom. My first; my fondest; the one who got away. It’s been years, but they’re still fine as ever. They roll down their window and give me that look, I know the one, and I’m seduced. I don’t even stop or wait or apologize as I abandon my current fandom and hop into the car with my old fandom – the one I just can’t quit because they know all my buttons. 

“Seduced” by a fandom. It cracks me up. 

squid’s laws of fic (not inclusive)

sacrificethemtothesquid:

first law: write the fic you wish to see in the world aka goddammit do I have to do everything myself around here

second law: it’s going to be longer than you think. much longer. hahaha so long. why are you crying 

third law: the time spent writing is inversely proportional to the amount of smut present, dammit

fourth law: flesh out your secondary characters. make them real people. have them take over. oh god. put them back. somebody please help 

fifth law: the time spent researching canon is directly proportional to the amount of time you’ll spend altering your plot. that one person on the internet 

sixth law: the time spent researching in general will eclipse the time you spend writing. the nsa agent monitoring your internet search history is curled up in a corner. his boss wants to know if you’re a threat. “I don’t know,” the agent sobs. “I just really don’t know.” 

seventh law: at some point, someone will ask what your favorite hobby is. you will feign a heart attack to get away

itsbuckybitch:

avoidcats:

manic-intent:

rabidchild67:

olderthannetfic:

esteefee:

itsbuckybitch:

buckyballbearing:

I see a lot of posts going around talking about the need to be critical of fanfic, and how we gotta watch out for the messages we’re sending

Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:

Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)

And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography

I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet

I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it

Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society

It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free

And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)

Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places

I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women

And I’m going to need it to stop

Fandom purity wank is absolutely about control over women and women’s sexuality. There’s nothing ambiguous about it.

Just think about the hot-button issues in the fannish community, the topics that consistently and reliably get people worked up into a lather, the themes that provoke the nastiest conflicts and inspire the most dedicated resistance movements. Think about the fights that are most likely to spill out over their cyber boundaries and start affecting people in the real world – in public harassment at cons, in doxxing and ‘outing’ to family and employers, in malicious legal allegations.

It’s about sex. It’s always about sex. 

From the constant tantrums over ‘problematic’ shipping to the righteous doxxing of ‘pedophiles’ (which in current tumblr parlance means anyone who draws or writes canonically underage characters in romantic or erotic scenarios), fandom’s big efforts at moral reform always seem to revolve around restricting and controlling the sexual expression of the majority-women community. You won’t meet many people who stay up past their bedtime to scream at strangers on the internet about unethical portrayals of non-sexual violence – unless, of course, they suspect the women involved in its creation are getting off on it. You’ll struggle to find an anti blog dedicated to the insidious social ills of torture whump fic, or goopy hurt-comfort where all manner of human suffering is put on display for the viewer’s enjoyment. The purity crew dress up their agenda as a desire for collective self-improvement and raised moral standards, but they don’t seem too worried about aspects of public morality that don’t somehow tie back into sex. What they’re upset about is the same thing conservative minds have been upset about since basically the dawn of time – there are women out there in the world doing icky sex things without the permission of their communities.

And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ – they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ – they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.

The core assumption underlying all of it – an assumption that I’m sure our puritan forebears would find deeply comforting – is that women’s sexual expression is a matter of public concern, and that women are directly responsible for upholding the moral standards of their communities by restricting themselves to a narrow repertoire of publicly controlled, socially condoned sexual outlets. Anything beyond that repertoire is a grave moral breach.

To anyone who’s reading this – and there’s always a few – thinking, “this is just deflection! [X hot-button topic] is really bad and harmful!’, I’d like to encourage you to sit back for just a moment and think about why it is, exactly, that you feel the best and most important place to wage your war against moral corruption is in one of the only pockets of popular media that women unequivocally control. Of all the spaces in the world where you could be fighting for your view of a better society, you’ve chosen a place where women come together to share the fantasies that mainstream culture refuses to let them indulge. Why?

“…women come together to share the fantasies that mainstream culture refuses to let them indulge.”

I was just telling a friend of mine I attribute my (fortunate) comfort with my own sexuality to a chance encounter, at a very young age, with a paperback titled “My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies,” by Nancy Friday. Found it in a stack of mystery novels, and man, I remember blushing so hard… It was reading all these fantasies other women had that normalized what, at that young age, I considered to be pretty extreme desires, all in the context of this authority saying, “Anything you fantasize in the privacy of your own head is perfectly natural and okay.”   She asked hundreds of women to share these fantasies so that others could read them and see we aren’t alone; most everyone has these thoughts and fantasies and desires, and that’s perfectly fine.  Since then, I’ve discovered fan fiction as a whole universe of people’s fantasies writ large, and goddamn it, that is perfectly fine. Anyone who wants to argue the point and try to stuff us all back into the cramped cupboard of shame should have a talk with Ms. Friday. I believe she’s still around.

Agreed. Women are shamed for exploring dark themes everywhere else. Fandom does not need to be a safe haven for people who never want to hear about that: the entire rest of the world is a safe haven for anti-kink, anti-sex, anti-woman feelings.

Ship and let ship, don’t like don’t read, and your kink is not my kink and that’s okay: these are the maxims that make fandom a welcoming, creative space.

“Fandom does not need to be a safe haven for people who never want to hear about that: the entire rest of the world is a safe haven for anti-kink, anti-sex, anti-woman feelings.”

There are a lot of corners of fandom that need this (metaphorically) branded on their foreheads.

When I first started in fandom over a decade back the predominant attitude (at least in the fandoms I was in) was ymmv… your mileage may vary…. can we go back to that please.  

it is incredible to me that writing pornography about minors somehow fits in to this otherwise interesting and informative post about “problematic” fandom behaviour

telling pedophiles to quit it is not a bad thing btw

#like i agree about criticisms and about the need to crack down on problematic things that aren’t just shipping #(tho i see a lot of talking about racism and trans/homophobia in fandom) #but writing about children fucking is literally pedophilia 

It “literally” is not.

Molesting and abusing children is literally pedophilia. Grooming children for molestation and abuse is literally pedophilia. Viewing and disseminating actual child porn is literally pedophilia.

Teenage shippy fanfiction is not literally pedophilia. It’s not even figuratively pedophilia, and I don’t buy for one split second that any of the people trying to derail this post with ~but think of the children~ actually believe that the entire Harry Potter fandom is a malicious network of predators. It is so, so incredibly belittling of CSA survivors to equate their actual real-world suffering with the benign hobbies of fucking Katniss/Peeta shippers. It is so, so cynical and disrespectful to use real live vulnerable children as a weapon in your goddamn ship wars.

Pedophilia is not a joke. It’s not an accusation to sling at anyone who pisses you off on the internet. It’s an incredibly real, incredibly serious issue and I am so, so tired of seeing it trivialised.

leupagus:

unpretty:

awesome-blossom:

unpretty:

amimijones:

unpretty:

insisting a fictional culture uses a sexagesimal number system is all fun and games until you keep having to invent words because so many things in english are rooted in base-10

What kind of words?

Decimate? Decade?

decade, but also measurements of distance. there is now an elaborate backstory for where they get their measurement systems from, which i will never actually use or share, it will just exist in the ether as a weird fact that only i know

You ever try rooting through language for words derived from real-world location names and proper nouns?  Words you’d logically have to cut out of usage for a fictional setting?  There’s a LOT of them.  More than you’d think.

for the most part i don’t worry about it, because literally everything and anything can be handwaved away as a translation—as long as they’re still referring to a person who gets off on hurting people, the word ‘sadist’ is an acceptable translation to english of whatever word they actually use, and regardless of whether their society has secretaries we can still translate whatever they call that weird-ass bird to secretary bird. hell, most of the time i take the handwaving one step further, like “okay well obviously they don’t have ducks on this weird fantasy planet but this bird is similar enough to a duck that if an english speaking person moved there they would call it a duck” because if a ruffed grouse can be a partridge then why the can’t this fake water bird be a duck. if it’s a lumpy brown starch that grows underground then english speakers are going to call it a potato because that’s just how language works. if i’m going to have a fiction that english speakers can read then it’s going to have to be in english regardless of whatever fictional language they would surely use instead and that makes everything an approximate translation imho. BUT my problem is when they are referring to something totally different, i.e., they don’t refer to a collection of ten years because that number has no real significance, they refer to a collection of twelve instead, so the word ‘decade’ doesn’t work at all. or measurements of distance, which are always totally arbitrary no matter what culture you’re from! the meter is ultimately no less bullshit than the foot. no language in real life has a word for “the length of this fictional person’s forearm, which has for a number of historical and cultural reasons become the standard around which our system of measuring length is based” let alone a word for “sixty of that person’s forearm”. you can’t just say a mile, or a kilometer, or a league, because those are different distances! english speakers who moved to this fake place would not just start calling sixty forearms a mile; they would use whatever word the locals used, and then figure out how to convert one length to the other rather than just adopt their perfectly good system of measurement like reasonable people.

which makes writing about it A HUGE PAIN but anyway

This is an excellent post but also I am DYING to read the backstory and info on the base-sixty counting system.

slipstreamborne:

slipstreamborne:

I was doing some deep diving in a dissertation/thesis database today and I stumbled across a doctoral dissertation on omegaverse fics and conceptions of the body in fandom.

Wherever you are, doctor, I salute you.

Something Queer in His Make-Up: Genderbending, Omegaverses, and Fandom’s Discontents by Elliot Aaron Director, PhD.

Slightly misremembered the topic (more reproduction and gender roles than just the body in isolation), but it’s 216 pages long, focuses entirely on Sherlock and Hobbit fandoms, and you can read the whole goddamn thing if you scroll down to “files”.