#I know modern fandom as we know it started because of women shipping spirk

[king-mera]

Maybe it’s counter-productive to add further divisions in online communities, but I kind of wish there was a word for when you’re a fan of something but don’t care about ships.

[aliasl]

ok, I've been tagged in this enough times that i've finally read everything and feel like responding

FIRST, I admire your passion, @osakanone. But I'd advise you redirect that passion to enjoyment and not competition.

I DON'T want to insult you, but I'll just say: you seem young. The demographic you are counting as "shippers," and thus the units you are measuring popularity of the aforementioned ships by, are fanfic writers. It gives you numbers to work with, but it's not fair to say that the number of fics directly relates to number of fans of a ship. Writing is a huge undertaking that not every ship enjoyer undertakes, and not only that, it's a strange metric to focus on - what about fan art? What about DOUJINSHI???

Gundam, as a Japanese property, has its own unique fandom ecosystem. I'm an American who's been an anime fan a loooooong time, and I don't know all the ins and outs, but fanfiction doesn't seem to be a popular medium there. Rather, doujin is king.

And let's talk about fan works... Why do they exist? Because, despite how much you enjoy a piece of media, you see something missing. You don't transcribe a show when you write fanfic. It's a creative process. Talking about doujin - a visible, money-making part of fandom - that's an easy way for a mangaka/creator to see the popularity of their work; rather than a census (like Shonen Jump will do a weekly popularity quiz), you have Comiket. And so, Yoshiyuki Tomino rightly points out the fujos as the true, passionate fanbase - the fellow creators, not just the consumers who buy toys. But why do "fujoshi" exist? These "rotten women"? Because they see gay love where a homophobic, majority straight audience (by which I mean society) refuse to. And we won't get into a conversation about "fetishizing homosexuality" and "authorial intent." Maybe Tomino would have included explicit gay representation in his shows if he could, but... we all know that Gundam is not that.

Thus all the gay fanworks, in which fans make up for what canon lacks. And you probably don't all ship the same ships. Or agree on characterization. And anyway, "The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop" ....... When I was a teenager, I was saving jpegs of my fav yaois to my PC en masse. Archival ain't just an adult mindset; shipping isn't majority teenagers. If even the creators of fan works aren't holding onto their work and reuploading on modern, supported sites... that speaks to a lack of care, not just a lack of foresight.

FFN went to adult fanfiction.net or live journal or ao3, and it was up to the authors to transfer their works themselves (you DO NOT reupload someone else's work FOR THEM). So if they didn't... it was they who moved on. REITERATING AGAIN: the number of fanfics does not equal the number of shippers (and not just because one author could be uploading a hundred fics of the same pair - it's just not a direct measurement), but it was an easy number to point to when *checks notes ... can't find it, has to Google* "Sulemio" was pitted against Destiel.

Gundam Witch Mercury premiered in 2022!! Destiel became a ship in 2008!!!!!! With all due respect, it was not a fair fight nor is a Tumblr poll an accurate census. "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural" I certainly have. I never got around to watching this Gundam show, though I've heard a bit about it - only great things. Meanwhile, I am still obsessing over Supernatural (and particularly Destiel) four years after the show ended, and over a decade since I started watching the show. I don't expect everyone to share my obsession. Tumblr may be the destiel site, but no one is enforcing ship supremacy.

It was a bad idea to start a fight over ships to begin with! Again, "Sulemio" has existed 2 years; Destiel has existed 16!!! It's just basic respect for legacy. You think I ship Spirk?? No. I never got into Star Trek. I don't find Shatner and Nemoy attractive or compelling, personally. But do I go kick the hornet's nest? No. This has transformed two molehills into an ugly mountain. Now, you're casting aspersions like Destiel shippers are "waspy Americans." As though it isn't also a global phenomenon (which just isn't impressive these days, with the internet. What ISN'T a global phenomenon?). Spn also has a female majority audience. We are not so different. Only in size.

So can we not make this about race? Or ethnicity? Or country? Or men vs women? Let's just not insult entire fanbases! You don't make yourself big by trying to make others feel small.

P.S. I never heard of Yukio Mishima before, but reading the Wikipedia page on his Forbidden Color book, without much context... why are we upholding misogynist, infidelious gays as great gay storytelling? You know the root of homophobia is male misogyny. All my homies hate gay misogynists.

tldr; nature is NOT healing. same shit, different day. there'll be peace when we are done, which is how you know we ain't done yet 🙄 😒

UPDATE: The Destiel/Supernats aren't taking this well -- explaining my reasoning for the history I gave, and why Destiel is not the big bitch of shipping that it thinks it is

An update to THIS:

"This is just a marketing thing, Gundam is a giant robot show, only men watch it!"

Gundam's fandom is silent majoratively feminine:

"But its not gay, its about giant robots!"

Gundam is very gay. The entire climax of the first story is a riff of Yukio Mishima lmao

The climax of the Amuro/Char arc of Universal Century Gundam (expounding from first Gundam circa 1979), Char's Counterattack is somewhat on the history of Japanese disillusion with liberalism which notably climaxed with the life and history of Yukio Mishima.

You know. THAT Yukio Mishima.

The one who wrote FORBIDDEN COLOURS.

It was so gay that the fanfiction inspired by it became its own damn anime:

And that's just Charmuro, let alone Charma or a billion other ships just in OG Gundam alone.

We've got This is before we get to Guin Sard Lineford and Yamagi Glimerton (both verrrrry gay), Tieria Erde (a genderqueer trans-coded character who transcends gender entirely in their arc) and a bunch of others.

Gundam was always gay.

"I don't see the numbers"

"That doesn't seem like much, Supernat is at least 2x this"

Sooooo the amount of content you do see isn't representative of how much even got written, given FFN had a huge content purge.

First, let's start with the relative proportion of users: If we're analysing the concept of fandom, we first have to look at who had access to the internet in the first place to publish works.

Yeah that's a pretty sizable difference.

Wing's fandom actually exploded in 2000, but got capped VERY early, distributing itself to fansites when FFN fragmented and collapsed.

Why?

Content purges!

"Isn't there some sort of online archive of this stuff?"

Sure, if you wanna dig through tons and tons of Angelfire and Geocities pages which have mostly disappeared. Otherwise, no! There is no archive of this stuff?

"Why?"

They've since rolled back on this but it means there's a massive amount of lost media out there, including the discussions on it and thus there's an entire history you didn't get to experience.

Its actually very difficult to reach people who've been involved, since it was so long ago that very few people remember, and a sizable proportion of that population have actually died.

"But what about SF fandoms? We have ancient records of stuff like Spirk!"

See unlike physical media like zines, when a server goes offline or there's a data-loss, or something like that there is no surviving copy of the thing in question.

The net result is we have this weird hole where content just vanished, and its now considered lost media. The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop.

You're not gonna hear about all the X-Files stuff or Frasier fanfictions or GW stuff because of these purges and the lack of physical media. FFN users were teens, not adults with resources like US/EU/JP SF fans, who had archival tendencies due to their long history.

So there is this supermassive black-hole in the history of fanfiction running between 1998, and 2008 and some of the only evidence of it are worksafe works and fansites which the owners have long since forgotten about because folks moved on. Moving on is a normal part of fandom.

So to those of you just saying "supernatural is losing to a pair of dumb anime girls" or "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural"...

Uhhhhh no they won't, actually?

Supernat's fans mostly seem to be waspy Americans. Gundam is kind of a global phenomenon, one which has traditionally had a silent majority female audience, a vocal minority male audience -- and every time that majority has spoken up, its coincided with a content purge, or a TOS change that mysteriously biases American derived fiction over Japanese derived fiction.

Funny that.

tl;dr:

NATURE IS HEALING

[calliecat93]

When I was fifteen years old, I found out about Star Trek: The Original Series. Back then, Star Trek as I knew was only The Next Generation, and I was apathetic about that. I found out through simple curioaity, but I had nothing to better to do so I looked into it. It sounded kind of interesting, so I found the show on Hulu and decided to give it a shot. I quit midway through the third episode. I saw it as old, cheesy looking, and dumb. Why waste my time on something old? Over the years, the more I got involved in online fandom culture, the more I would see it pop up. The more I would ehar about how having PoC inr egular roles was revolutionary just because it showed that they existed. How the show enrained so many science fiction tropes and ideals into modern Americn media in the vein as Dotor Who has in Britian. Heck a review show I used to watch went over the comic adptations of the films, and came off as so passionate about the franchise that I remembered my previous stance. Remembered how I threw it aside as a relic of the past, despite me even thn seeing the value as I valued classical animaiton and children’s media very highly.

IDK what provoked it, but in January of this year, I decided to watch the entirety of Star Trek. Maybe it was quarentine rentine making me snap. Maybe it was me giving in at last to those urges that had been prodding at me for years. Regardless, I made the choice, and it only made sense to begin with the one that started it all. I am now 28 years old. I have grown far more patient and respectful with the things that came before my time. Media holds a great deal of value and whether I understood it or not, Star Trek was vital to popular media. I was ready to give it a second chance. I expected to go in with a greater appreciation, but otherwise not have many strong feelings abou it. I got through those three episodes again with my feelings better than before, but not too different. But I was determined to keep going. So for two months, I watched episode after episode and this weekend I ended it with the original films. Now here we all at the end of the journey. How do I feel?

I felt very regretful for throwing it aside the way that I did.

I greatly enjoyed TOS. Far more than I had ever expected. It is very much a product of the 60’s. There was a limited budget and it showed, though they made the most of it. There were many ridiculous plots, rampant sexism, and hammy acting that is utterly laughable. Some days I could go along with it, other days I just wanted them to get it over with. And yet, none of it kept me away. There were ideals revolutionary for the time like PoC standing equal to others, themes of all kinds such as anti-war and humanity, great science fiction concepts that may be standard today but don’t rob them of their enjoyability, and so much fun but also many moments that made you think. But most of ll, it had such lovely characters. For me to care about a show, I have to care about it’s chracters. I knew a few things via pop culture, butt hat’s not the same as understanding them as a viewer and media can frequently exaggerate the reality. And as I found out, there was far more to them than what mdia lead me to believe.

Kirk I only ever knew as a brave captain who made out with a lot of women. While that’s true, I can’t call him a reckless womanizing asshole. He was brave, optimistic, diplomatic, and charming. He could be light-herted, but also very much a devoted Starfleet Captain whose duty is his entire being. I was shocked at how much I grew to care about him. Seeing his triumphs, his failings, his strengths and flaws, even on an off day I cared about him. Even when William Shatner hammed it up too much, I enjoyed seeing him. Spock was who I knew the most about consideirng how popular he was and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I also grew to love him. His logic, his struggle with his dual being as half Vulcan and half Human, his loyalty to Kirk and his dedicaiton to his duty. I could see why he meant so much to people, esecially witht he level of depth and work that Leonard Nimoy put into the character. There’s s amny little things that you begint o notce and it makes Spock feel all the more real. But by far the biggest appeciaiton I grew was for McCoy. He was the character I knew the least about aside form him being a doctor and remembering the first episode. But GOD I love his character so much. His crankiness, snarkiness, and his arguments with Spock were entertaining but seieng how compassionate, devoted, and caring that he is especially when I watched The Empath ahead of time and saw his sacrifice... damn. Not to mention DeForest Kelley’s perormance with him imo being the best peformer aside from Nimoy. He gave it hus all even during the dumbest episodes and that always earns my respect. I didn’t think I’d care about Bones that much, knowing him as that guy who’s more important than the rest but not even close to as much as Kirk and Spock, and he walked away as my absolute favorite character who I will continue to give the love and appreciate that he deserves.

The others were great too. Scotty was funny, great at his job, and the amount fo times he saved thm all via some miracle is to be admired. Sulu was significant for being an Asian man as a regular and in a high position, and I just loved having his prescence. Uhura being a Black woman treated as an equal by her white male peers and being a dedicated, sassy communicaitons officer as well as her lovely musical talents made her a delight. Chekov when he came along added a nice, youthful prescence without him getitg annoying and having a Russian as a hero at that time was also a big deal. While the show struggled BIG TIME with gender and feminism, it was major at the time for presenting PoC and those of other nationalities as equal to others, and the cast clearly did their best to make them feel like actual people. I respect that a great deal. We all should sot hat we can keep improving from there.

I didn’t expect to care. I expected to get the show over with and have something to occupy my time. And yet, I do care. I care about these characters. I care about the shenanigains that they get involed in. I worry when they get into distress even though I know that they’ll be fine. There were plenty of things I knew in advance like Spcok’s deaht in the movies... and I cried anyways. I knew that nothing long-term bad would happen in the series, yet I feared for the cast and their situaton anyways. I grew invested in them. In their relaitonships. The Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic was by far my favorite thing and it kept me wanting to keepw atching. Not to occupy my time, but because I genuienly wanted to see what they got into and how they got out of it. To see Kirk and Spock’s mutual respect and trust in each other. To see Spock and McCoy argue over logic and emotion and be wiling to defend the other, to see Kirk and Bones joke and be at ease with each other as the close longitme firends that the are, and just having the three together... it was such a perfect dynamic. Hell I didn’t expect to ship anything aside form maybe Spirk due to knowing it’s significance to fandom, slash,a nd the LGBT+ community. And I came away shipping all three dynamics...a nd veering on all three together, but IDK if I’m quite there yet. But whether shippy or platonic, their relaitonship together is perfect and I loved it.

Now, the journey is over. Oh I plan to go back and do it all over again. I plan to pay even more atteniton. I plan on giving each episode as good of an analysis as I can give. I plan to try and seek out things like the novels and the comics so that I can have more itme with them. I plan to watch the reboot films to see what happes in a different universe. I plan to watch TNG and hope that I enjoy those charactrs that I ignored my entire life just as much as I did these. But for now, it’s over. It is a ride that I am thankful to have taken. I came in indifferen, and am leaving a fan looking forward to whatever else awaits. Thank you Star Trek TOS for this amazing two month journey. Thank you tot he cast and crew who put so much into it despite everything working against them. Thank you to the fans who watched it and kept it alive for all of these decades. And to those who read tot his point and all of my watchthrogh posts, thank you for sitcking with me. It was, without doubt, an experience that I’m never going to forget.