#Problems of being in a new fandom

[sporthb1]

Watched Honor Among theives again and wow. Just wow. First time I watched it as a movie goer second time it was a dnd player and jump scare warner for friend. Just.... Simon is perfect the entire way all the charecters have there personal arcs but the have a verry constant and sustained personality. And xenk no more needs to be said, he is my hot, autistic, bi boy and like thanks to charecters I've played I'm conditioned to hate palidins but he changed my tune I love him so much, and the fact he is everything edgin hates a harper, thayan and strict moral code but by the time he leaves edgin basicaly begs him to stay. That just means so much to me.

[mrmeepsmadmind]

starbee comic,,, if u get the reference then u understand a pivotal part of how i see their dynamic

Bee x scream is like if that one rlly bubbly & makes herself seem ditzy and cute girl to everyone to have friends who'll dump her the moment they get a bf & she's probably on the spectrum but no one notices or cares to delve deeper into her bcs she's so 'cute' & smiles & masks to be liked ( bcs she doesnt want anyone to delve deeper into her personality & realize shes actually Not perfect miss lil daddys girl purity ring ) was forced to be stuck with The Bitchtm intimidating weird girl who's also undiagnosed but everyone knows there's Something with her & treated her differently in a way they Think is discreet but She Knows & no matter how hard she tries, everyone's gonna have this Undertone with her so she's just given up on trying to seem pleasant to everyone but still desperately wants to be loved & has a slight clue as to why ppl keep hating her even when she tries for them not to for once but still can't get an answer bcs her life sucks and diagnosis is expensive and she has no time and she's - omg why is this bitch (bee) making her notes all cute with big colorful fonts & organized by alphabetical shade marker collection haha she's so weird (<- is Also weird bcs hes starscream). im gonna ask to borrow one of her favorite markers (the baby blue one) and dry it out while she stares at me with big wet eyes trying to find a polite way to put 'im gonna kill you' in a sentence

[galedekarios]

i don't know how to put this into words yet so it makes complete sense so bear with me while i gather my thoughts, but...

i think a lot of the criticism i have re: decisions bioware made with veilguard are (at least in part) the company's direct responses to the (in my eyes) often unfounded and disproportionate hate that inquisition received from the fanbase.

[getvalentined]

I don't talk FlightRising often because it's kinda something I do with my sister, so it's closer to "IRL" than "fandom" for me—but as someone in Light who recently celebrated her tenth anniversary on the site, the complaints I keep seeing about our new Everlux babies are ridiculous.

Light is the flight with the dragon breed whose bodies can and will fuse together into a horrible undead monster if too many of them are killed in a single location and their corpses aren't removed or destroyed quickly enough. Our other modern breed eats its own eggshell after hatching, as soon as it's able to chew, and then spits it back up in the form of a pearl that it just kinda carries around for the rest of its life. Why is the magical draconic caterpillar too much?

You don't have to like the design, but this is ludicrous. You don't have to keep them. I don't keep Ridgebacks because I don't like how they look. I promise no one is going to arrest you for not having the "right" dragon PNGs in your lair.

For the love of Glittermom, pick up your eggs from Galore, hatch them, then sell them. I don't think the babies are clanbound, are they? Just the eggs? (Correct me if I'm wrong on this.) Someone who wants them gets first-gen Everluxes, you get paid, everyone goes home happy.

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine if you were a gay or bi man who tried a certain firefighter show because of all the attention it was getting for one of its mains having a later in life bi awakening.....and between seasons you ventured into its fandom in search of material to tide you over til the next one. And you're greeted by a deluge of posts and fics that are just cheerfully homophobic towards one half of the newly out bi character's canon relationship on the basis of 'well he's not the RIGHT gay guy' and pushing the idea that actually its fine to cheat on him because Reasons and he's sexually predacious based on......behind the scenes implications people have divined like they're reading fucking tea leaves.

But don't get it twisted....this fandom, like all fandoms, really cares about representation!

Sorry not sorry, but we really need to kill this idea that fandoms are welcoming and inviting and inherently progressive when they're frequently insular and reductive as fuck. Every single fandom I've been in has had major trends of people doubling down on their own headcanons and fanon interpretations of the characters and willfully enacting trends aimed at running off people who like the 'wrong' characters (usually characters marginalized along one or multiple axes), like the characters in the 'wrong ways' or other bullshit.

Scott is a Bad Friend fics overtaking Teen Wolf fandom was not incidental, it was a FEATURE of the fandom, because the vast majority of that fandom did not want to share its space with anyone who had the nerve to like its main character. Survivors complaining about or criticizing the prevalance of rape fics in a certain fandom has in my experience always led to a reactionary UPTICK in those fics, with gems like 'this character can, will, must be raped' in the tags making it crystal clear that some of these fics exist because how fucking DARE anyone try and push forth a narrative not agreed upon by Fandom Main.

I could cite examples for so many other fandoms, with the commonalities always being that vast majorities in these fandoms are explicitly reacting defensively to being asked to be more mindful of fandom trends revolving around or exacerbating racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape or abuse apologia, ableism, etc....

With the most prolific fucking rallying cry across countless fandoms being "No the fuck we will NOT be doing that," because lolololol.....

Fandom is an inherently progressive space, didn't you hear?

[notmoreflippingelves]

I keep getting so caught up in the euphoria of so many people getting to know and love Kay Faraday for the first time that for a moment I forget that I live in a fandom that will inevitably reduce her to a prop for narumitsu.

[lazorbeanz]

I’ve finished reading all the issues!

I love them SO SO MUCH! They’re so hilarious I practically could not stop laughing the entire time 🤣 The writing is immaculate and is very Sonic Boom coded…especially with the unruly amount of fourth wall breaking.

Everyone is just so sassy and silly and cute it makes me love this spin-off even more! 💛💙🩷❤️

[celtrist]

Why does Vassago already have merch, we haven't even met him yet

[al-luviec]

still haven't moved on from zane in this episode (aka I hit tag limit again and am unhappy about it)

[someoneoffthestreet]

a late observation about Epic: The Musical but is it intentional that Odysseus’ name isn’t said or sung aloud once for eight (8) songs straight, until he says it himself at the end of “Remember Them”?

Eurylochus and Polites exclusively call him “Captain” and “my friend”, Zeus and Athena address him in a kind of “hey you” sort of way, “Warrior of the Mind” has Athena ask Odysseus’ name and he dodges with “you first”. maybe it’s just a byproduct of his name being difficult to fit into songs, but idk, I think it’s kind of neat that Odysseus giving his name to Polyphemus doubles as him giving it to the audience, too.

[solavelyan]

Listen I try not to Disk Horse very much on here but I think it's something to keep in mind that if you hated Veilguard and you feel like the only two kinds of people you see are "smart people who hated it like I did" and "stupid toxic positivity casuals gaslighting me", part of the problem might be that the "Veilguard was trash" people are being so insufferable that some people (me) are keeping a lot of our complaints and critiques to our group chats because we don't want to be associated with the people making this section of the fandom actively hostile right now.

Just food for thought.

[eyes-of-nine]

I think I'd be way more into the magnus protocol if half the fandom wasn't already obsessing over jonmartin all over again. like honestly I'm kinda over them tbh I miss when we cared more about the horrors

[butwhatifidothis]

It really is strange how Edelstans simultaneously dig hard into people that don't agree with their specific interpretation of 3H to the point of being happy they manage to drive those people away... and be so upset and baffled that people become generally disinterested/actively hostile towards 3H content.

If folks get repeatedly driven out of a fandom, and that group of people repeatedly calls anyone who disagrees with their specific interpretation of 3H stupid/illiterate/"acting in bad faith"/sexist/racist/homophobic/etc., and it is repeatedly done by a group of people who insist that 3H's fandom problem is a "both sides" thing, with all of this being dragged into spaces that have nothing to do with 3H, well... obviously people are then going to start to dislike interacting with either 3H in general or its fandom in particular?

Edelstans are the ones spreading the idea that 3H's fandom in totality is shit. They keep trying to make their hands look cleaner than they are by claiming that everyone else's hands are just dirty as/even dirtier than theirs. Of course people who are unaware of everything are going to then assume that everyone's hands are dirty, thus making people not exactly want to shake hands with anyone.

Like, really now. What did they think was going to happen when they directly go after fanartists/fanfic writers who create/say things that go against the Approved Edelstan Status Quo, to the point that a non-zero amount of these creators just up and leave social media entirely? Or after they nitpick every single Disapproved Post and then lie about the post's OP? Or after it becomes a consistent pattern that people who even remotely disagree with Edelstans' opinions are always, without fail, buried with insulting and harassing anons? Or after they're shown time and time again to defend their worst actors with "well their/our victims deserved it because they said a 3H opinion we didn't agree with"? Or when they say that everyone does this shit in 3H's fandom except for them (which is either not believed because it's demonstrably untrue or is actually believed and now those people think the overwhelming majority of 3H's fandom is filled with shit)? Or when they drag 3H discourse into literally actually everything no matter how unrelated?

That with less fandom creators within the fandom space they'd get more content? That harassing and insulting people and accusing them of being this-and-that bigot is going to magically "correct" their minds into seeing The One Truth about 3H? That people are going to just look over all the shit they did just because they allocate the blame of their action on all of 3H's fandom? That people would like 3H more if they constantly remind people of the inarguable worst thing to come from 3H? That this would help 3H's general perception?

Fuckin' no, of course that's just going to make everyone fuck off from 3H. And would you look at that, a shit ton of people have fucked off from 3H since everything has been swept under a "well it'sth a bolth thides ithue tho what can ya do?" rug. And it's been swept under that rug by pretty much the only people who are pulling this shit, who then get shocked - utterly gobsmacked! - that that made them look bad too. That crying "both sides!" included themselves too and not just the people they've been harassing. That saying that the entire fandom is bad everywhere made the entire fandom look bad everywhere.

If Edelstans are really so upset that no one talks about 3H positively anymore, then maybe they should stop being the reason no one likes 3H anymore. Just a thought

[anneapocalypse]

I made my best attempt at taking at a FFXIV hiatus in November to play Veilguard in full, but well, wasn't my fault there was a patch drop right in the middle of November. :') And I wasn't about to miss that, so. It kind of threw off what momentum I had in Dragon Age, and I haven't gotten back to it yet. And I will, I do want to play it, but I'm just going to be real about the fact that it's not gonna happen this month. The holiday season is stressful and right now FFXIV is my comfort game and I'm just trying to chill and get through December. I'll come back to it in the new year when I'm ready.

[icicleteeth]

Im glad most people (that im seeing at least) aren’t cutting the dev team any slack wrt their overdue response to the stalker plugin, i for one was willing to cut quite a bit of slack for a lot of the issues with this latest expac but not this, this specific issue with the account IDs and their response is probably the most doompilling “oh they actually do not give a shit about the playerbase anymore” thing to come out of DT from me 🥲

[aroceu]

i'm making this post mostly to vent, but also to reflect.

being in mdzs fandom was the first time being in fandom felt like... "content," to me. like i was a creator who WAS obliged to the masses, who was seen as holding some social power because i was interested in creating works for people to enjoy, rather than enjoying them myself. even though i am both: i am someone who likes to read as much as i like to write. i like enjoying as much as i like creating things for people to enjoy. i don't believe in this dichotomy, and i sure as hell didn't come into fandom for parasocial attention.

one of the problems definitely was that i was on twitter more than i was writing, and i was thinking of ways to game the algorithm so i stayed on people's feeds, because of the way twitter began to work, because of my own anxiety, and because subconsciously i understood the landscape. i didn't like it but i knew it. and too much was going on in my life that i couldn't take a step back and realize how much it was negatively affecting me.

still, it felt weird and strange and wrong to have followers with bios that said things like "don't perceive me i'm just here to read." strangers who would reply to my posts with over-familiarity and rudeness and said they were justified because i had over 1000 followers on twitter, because that is apparently a marker of how you are "allowed" to treat another stranger online. throwing around the terms "bnf" and "popular" as if they mean something beyond being similar to how american high schools work. i saw people group me and my friends who also had a lot of followers as this exclusive class of people in the fandom because we liked making things for other people to enjoy and we had a lot of followers, and therefore they could treat and generalize us all in weird dehumanizing ways because of it. i saw people complain that if any of us said anything "problematic" or "wrong" then it was a moral failing on the rest of us if we didn't publicly call it out.

and like. fandom is not a content creation space. at least, not to me. while i do like attention and making a big number even bigger—like i'm not gonna lie, it does give me dopamine!—i didn't come here to generate a parasocial audience. i came here to make cool stuff and also make friends. and now with people who follow me because they like the things i make and less so me, something i now struggle with that i didn't used to in fandom is: do i follow people back? do these people see me as someone they want to admire and have a parasocial relationship with, or do they want to be friends? this post is a little bit of a PSA as well, i suppose: while i don't believe that everyone in fandom/who now follows me has this content creation mindset, i know there are people who do, and i don't know how to interact with strangers anymore. if you don't want me to interact with you and just want to admire me from afar, i want to respect that boundary. at the same time, i do like making friends. and i want to make friends with people who are just purely curious about me, not because i'm put on this parasocial pedestal.

i also don't think this is a problem with mdzs fandom specifically, or even necessarily just for fandom itself. i think a lot of spaces online have turned into this: where not only your social power but also your personhood, your identity starts and ends with how big the number next to your name is, and is an indicator to a stranger how humanizing you can treat them. make your private assumptions or judgments about me; i have no control over them so i don't care. but i am still a human behind the screen as much as you. i struggle with my day to day stuff as much as anyone else. and i want to make friends over that. i want to commiserate and bond with people; and while i won't pretend that i don't think there is a little more "influence" if the number next to your name is a bit bigger, i don't think it should detract from the reality that if someone has 30 followers or 3000, they are still human.

unless they're a bot.

but i'm also mostly making this post because let's face it: most of the friends i've made in any fandom, historically, have been either because i was a fan of their work, or they were a fan of mine. and that's what fandom is all about—an exchange, a conversation. why are we reinventing rigid hierarchies based on follower count? why should someone who likes my fics or someone whose fics i like be treated any differently, because of the role we play in this exchange? (and why should whose fanfic you enjoy say something about you as a person... but that's a different conversation lol) there are actual content creators i like, content creators who profit monetarily based purely on that, and the monetary profit is their primary motivator in having that label, that career in the first place. but that is not fandom, to me. fandom is not a job and i am not here to profit (all of my works and thoughts are free!), and in no way has money ever played a role in my existence in fandom. it is what it's always been: to make cool things and to meet cool people. and if nothing else, it's a bit disappointing to realize that not everyone feels the same.

anyway! tl;dr if you're interested in talking to me and being friends feel free to always reach out. i also know that my own response times can be spotty (another flaw of mine, alas) but i'm mostly making this post to say that i am not someone who thinks of myself as separate from my audience, and that my numbers/output mean very little to how willing i am to engage. i can get overwhelmed as much as anyone else, but in my heart if you're interested in a dialogue with me, then i am too. because that's what being in fandom is all about.