#fan culture history

[historian-crown]

WE HAVE BEEN ROBBED!!

Source: Spockanalia issue one 1967

Where the hell is my silly Lord of the Rings album, Mr. Nimoy????

[canichangemyblogname]

Please, please, please reblog for sample size. Make this a very popular poll on this site.

[arwidiyre]

Medusa

[ssleeping-in-a-coffin]

Ever wondered how royal wedding nights actually happened?

Forget the romantic tales where princesses find themselves alone with dark, mysterious heroes, and forbidden passion ignites. Medieval reality was far less poetic.

Love between nobles was rarely about feelings. Politics and dynastic ambitions ruled above all. One crucial stage after the wedding was the consummation of marriage — the official confirmation of the union.

Here’s the twist: it happened with witnesses. Counts, lords, and other important figures stood by — sometimes even in the room — ensuring the marriage was sealed... in every sense.

Without this ritual, vows meant nothing, and heirs could be questioned. History is often harsher than our favorite romantic fantasies.

[gingersnaptaff]

Thoughts on this ? ( my take as a American wtf guardian )

Oh, I've just read the article and it's... *sigh* a big fuckin yikes. I know a lot of people love Sarah J. Maas' novels - including some of my friends - and that's okay, but I think if you're leaning into and borrowing heavily from Welsh mythology then you should respect the culture. I won't lie to you, Wales has marketed itself as being a land of myth and legend (for example there's a tourism video - that my mam helped design! - that talks about Arthur), but there's a stark difference between that and, well, the A Court of Thorns and Roses series.

Using the Mabinogion story beats I don't have a problem with that, but they are fundamentally misrepresenting another culture at the end of the day. You're skewering it. Wales isn't this one-dimensional place and its culture isn't yours to do with as you please. I think you should vigorously research the Welsh language and culture the way you would any other language and culture and mythology to better inform your choices so you don't fall into this trap. We've had to endure centuries of colonialism from the English. They nearly obliterated Welsh, for fucks sake. If you don't have the decency to even commit a little bit of research to such a vibrant culture then like whack your books in the bin. You're just continuing to do as they've done for your benefit. (Also, RHYSAND ISN'T EVEN A NAME. IT'S RHYS.)

Also, this goes for The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater too. She misrepresents Owain Glyndŵr. It's pissed me off for fuckin YEARS. He wasn't a king, he was a PRINCE for a start. He - and all others like him - referred to themselves as Princes of Wales after Owain Gwynedd first used it to differentiate himself from the English kings. 'Tywysog' means chieftain. Princeps Walliae is what he signs himself as on his letters.

[freckliedan]

hi jam, what actually happened in 2012/2013? i got into the phandom in 2020, so i guess i just never fully understood? of course no worries if you don’t want to bring it up for whatever reason. (:

hi anon! i am always happy to discuss dan and phil history (editing to add: you can check out my tag on that here), especially since i've been around for long enough to have seen a Lot of it. the biggest factor is that dan and phil were outed in 2012; i have written about that before here.

i would reccomend rewatching dan's mental health series of videos (meaning of life, something i'm forgetting, daniel and depression, trying to live my truth) + BIG with the additional understanding that being outed at that point had a catastrophic impact on dan's mental health, especially considering his past traumas.

there were a lot of other reasons 2012 and 2013 were bad, some of which we knew at the time and some that we didn't.

dan's younger brother started to have social media, and fans were harassing him for information/pretending to be friends with him to get information/bullying him. that's something dan shut down HARD.

dan's grandma was also on twitter around this time iirc? so there was a very real chance he could've been outed to his family if someone had decided to cross the line in the worst way they could.

dan and phil had moved to london in 2012 without being able to afford it and without being sure they would get the bbc radio 1 jobs. so they were also under stupid amounts of financial stress while also adjusting to life in a new city when all of this happened.

2013 is also the year phil's dad was diagnosed with cancer. that's something that phil never shared until 2019 in his draw my life 2, but that's such a scary and overwhelming thing to be dealing with!

all at the same time!

the radio show era is also a time when dan and phil were so busy with projects and opportunities and saying yes to everything that it very, very clearly had a negative impact on them, which is something they have mentioned a number of times.

they were dealing with the transition into proper fame, too. i don't have enough toughts to gather about that but i'm sure someone else can speak to what that was like. a lot of youtubers of their original era left the platform at that that time due to the everything.

so. short answer. 2012-2013 was one of the most intense, overwhelming and difficult periods we know of in dan and phil's lives for so many reasons, even without factoring in the fact that they were outed. which also happened then.

they did not, in fact, have a difficult 2012 because people posted smut of them and they accidentally saw it. dan had already mentioned reading fic about himself on purpose at that point in time.

[some-stars]

okay so. kind of a weird thing. i just finished the dp&w making of, which was reasonably fun but pretty missable, and right as it finished i realized that shawn and ryan ALWAYS used "deadpool" to refer to the character. never his name. i mean maybe once or twice that i forgot but virtually never. they and hugh did say logan and wolverine about 40/60, but honestly that still feels weird to me coming from a fandom context. and, idk. there's a gap there. it feels emblematic of the gap between the people who get to make this kind of movie (cis white men), and the people who don't (us, for the most part). and how what they see as the most important elements of the story and characters are fundamentally out of alignment with what we want. there's a lot of overlap, which is why we're drawn to this stuff in the first place, but it's never going to actually line up. idk it's pretty disheartening but we carry on i suppose.

[kryptonbabe]

Today is TOS Amok Time's 57th anniversary, officially Spirk Day so I'm honoring the date by reading a paper on how the ideas behind Kirk/Spock slash fanfiction articulate queer love in a way that makes it accessible to everyone, queer or not, and it is the most romantic paper I've read! Happy Spirk Day!

An excerpt of the text:

This paper argues that what the characters of Kirk and Spock represent is an archetypal pairing that transcends gender altogether. By reading K/S queerly and broadly, these gender distinctions become irrelevant. What matters are the characters themselves, and the unique qualities that make fan authors - straight, gay, indifferent - feel the need to pair them. Specifically, the Kirk/Spock pairing represents not a bonded pair, but a divided self. Sexuality, like the mindmeld, becomes a stand-in for the reunification spoken of in Aristophanes' tale of the Children of the Sun - two humans once whole separated and ever seeking their other half. The corporate caretakers of these characters have proven themselves, to a broad readership, unwilling to realize the "particular style of the 23rd century" as one in which queer love is acceptable love. And so, for close to forty years, an active and activist readership has been doing it for them through the creation of an aberrant folklore that they believe adheres more closely to the spirit of the narrative's utopian origins. It has fallen upon the fan to become creator, the reader to become the author, and the author to become active in the reuniting of this divided self.

From The Final Frontier Is Queer: Aberrancy, Archetype and Audience Generated Folklore in K/S Slashfiction (2005) by P. J. Falzone on @jstor

[ellapastoral]

okay, y'all my homestuck deep dive is live on youtube. let's boost this one.

[jessamine-rose]

*lovingly tackles Aine*

Read my Yandere! Pierro longfics first ♪( ´▽｀)

Last week, my beloved mutual @ainescribe surprised me with Savior! Darling fan art and AHAI9232@2-!/! CRYING SCREAMING I WANT TO LOOK AT THIS ART AND WORSHIP YOUR VERSION OF SAVIOR THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BLESSING ME WITH YOUR ART—

*clears throat* Anyway, now that I finally have the time to properly sit down and comment on the fan art, I’ll do just that. Feedback will be in the tags and it will be unhinged. Once again, thank you so much to Aine for drawing this <3

[ishouldbedoingalright]

the number of people cheering that gareth's gone... babe he ranks third for all-time victories as england manager and all european championship runs to the final have been under his management. no men's manager has ever done that. he completely transformed how the england team are viewed not only by the public but by the players.

[sneeplerbeepler]

y'all remember onlyleigh? what's she doing rn

[thecharmingchimaera]

I think this goes hand-in-hand with the whole "why fanfic writers aren't receiving as much engagement/as many comments" situation, but I'm sure a lot of it has to do with this culture at the moment of like... immediately dismissing and trivialising and being expected to find faults in the things you love?

I see this a lot on YouTube - "Why This Thing is overrated", "Is Such-and-Such really actually good" etcetera etcetera, because someone for some godforsaken reason somewhere decided that being negative gets more clicks, and it's just like... when do people actually get to relax and enjoy things? Where can people go to wholeheartedly gush about their favourite thing, and not immediately have people criticising and pointing out the flaws in the story/character/book/insert-medium-of-choice here. It terrifies me.

I was only a young'un back in the early-to-mid 2010s, but from my experience of voraciously reading fanfic around that time, it feels like there was a lot more space for people to openly gush and express their love back then? From my vague memory, it feels like there was some unspoken agreement to keep immediate, reactionary "you should feel bad for liking this" to a minimum - sure, there was the dreaded fandom discourse, but I don't remember there being quite this much "this piece of media/character/art is not actually one hundred percent perfect, and therefore you're a horrible person for loving it, even if it makes your little heart sing".

I just feel like it was so much more communally acceptable to just... love stuff? Be unashamedly and unabashedly into things, and having that love and enjoyment and engagement respected? I'm sure that, coupled with the fact that most comment sections on other social media are rife with negativity, explains a lot. Where can people just wholeheartedly adore things without judgement?

Ugh, I dunno man. Anyway, comment on your favourite fanfics.

[themintman]

I don't know if you've posted anything about it before, but I was curious about the lore behind your Nurm. Like, what made you look at him and go "creature spotted" (proceeds to create a badass Nurm). He's just so great 🥺

OH I HAVENT POSTED ABOUT THIS YET, YOURE RIGHT.. I KEEP MEANING TOO OMG

I'm so thrilled to hear you love Nurm OML!! Honestly, I just like making creatures whenever I can.. 😭 my Nurm USED to be human when I first drew him (cause I figured that's the socially acceptable thing to do), but he slowly got more and more silly and now here we are. So, here is some Nurm stuff, and by extension notes on my creature villagers !!

---

Okay so first of all I know I've said this time and time again but I love it dearly. Even before he was fully creatured like he is now, my Nurm was based on these cats called oriental shorthairs. And oh my god fucking look at it

THAT IS NURM. THAT IS A NURM CAT. Even now, my villagers are heavily inspired by these little freaks, as you will see below ⬇️

Of course they have the long noses and heads and the thick brows like in actual Minecraft, but my villagers also have pointed ears and fangs. Also fur..

So.. no. My villagers technically aren't bald 😭 he feels a bit like a mouse or perhaps a hamster. Also, like I said in the photo, he can grow a much fluffier coat to keep warm! Fuzzy Nurm my beloved.. also yes this does mean he was super furry in episode two. And yes he came into the institute looking like a pom pom.

Villagers have patterns on their fur, some more common in certain biomes than others. Nurm has some stripes along his back and limbs, but this is only one pattern they can have! There's many more 😋 usually, the patterns are a slightly lighter or darker colour to the rest of their fur.

Also, villagers have a tail, as seen in a few of my drawings. Little deer like tail 😛 they also have longer bodies and shorter limbs, plus claws!

Nurm's behaviour is kinda cat like sometimes too. If you jump out at him his fur will puff up and he will jump back and stand up as tall as he can 😭. He sounds vaguely cat-like too. Yes he purrs. Yes he can loaf. Nurm loaf 🍞

I may do another post about my villagers (stuff like clothing, manners, etc etc), this is just general non-human stuff. The things that really make Nurm a Creature!!

(also if this isn't what you meant by Nurm creature lore please let me know!! I'm just now realising this is more villagers than Nurm-)

Uhhh tldr Nurm is just a freaky cat 😭

[melodioustear]

Let's Learn About Mental Illness and Fandom!

ETA: This survey has now closed. Thank you for so many more responses than I expected! I will announce as soon as the data is available to others to use and as I make my own discoveries in working with it.

Thank you so much everyone for your responses to my fanfiction and mental illness survey. As of posting we have 108 responses which is fantastic and very much enough for my own thesis, but I don't just want this data to be for me - I want it to be available to other fan studies researchers to work with and build upon.

This is the work I spoke about when I was on the @fansplaining podcast just a few months ago, and something that we just don't have in the fan stats community - our only related information is on whump, which whilst useful isn't by any means the same thing.

So if you'd like to help us learn more about how we read, write and interact with fanfiction about mental illness, please take the survey & share this post!

The survey will take you just 5-15 minutes, and will help to gather groundbreaking insights for fan studies. You’ll be asked about yourself, about how you read, write and find fanfiction about mental illness, and what interacting with this kind of fanfic has been like for you.

Full data on the study, including consent, privacy and GDPR information, can be found on the survey page.

Submissions will remain open until the 25th June 2023. Thank you so much!

[royalty-nobility]

Queen Theresa of Bavaria

Artist: Friedrich Dürck (Saxon, 1809-1884)

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Matthiesen Gallery, London

Description

Queen Theresa (1792-1854) was a daughter of Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, and Duchess Charlotte Georgine of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, eldest daughter of Charles II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. As a child she had grown up in the rather modest capital of her father’s small duchy of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and not in his later capital of Altenburg, which he acquired after the Saxon dukes reorganised their states in 1826. In 1809, Theresa had been on the list of possible brides for Napoleon, but following the latter’s marriage to the Archduchess Marie-Louise, she married the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig, on 12 October 1810. Their wedding was the occasion of the first ever Oktoberfest, which has been repeated almost every year since.

Her husband succeeded as king in 1825 but his numerous love affairs caused her some pain, which she tolerated while refusing to allow his mistresses to attend her at court. On one occasion, in 1831, she left the capital to make her disapproval clear – nonetheless, despite the difficulties in their marriage she was the mother of nine children, the oldest, Maximilian, succeeding as king when Ludwig was deposed following the 1848 revolution. Therese proved to be a capable royal consort, heading the government during her husband’s frequent foreign trips, and having some considerable political influence. She was particularly popular with the Bavarian public and was considered the embodiment of an idealised image of queen, wife and mother and was involved in a great number of charitable organisations for widows, orphans and the poor. She was the object of great sympathy during her husband’s very public infidelity with the notorious courtesan, Lola Montez, which contributed to the demands for his abdication in 1848.

This painting must be particularly noted for the extraordinary attention to the queen’s silk embroidered robes, her bracelets, necklace and earrings and the splendid tiara placed alongside the royal crown. Her robe is embroidered with gold leaves and flowers and along the bottom edge the blue and silver diamond lozenges of the Wittelsbach arms are sewn into gold edged ovals. An ermine robe hangs from over her shoulder to the ground and in her left hand she holds a gold bejewelled fan. Despite its small scale this superbly executed portrait holds the viewer’s attention in every detail, and is a testament to the artist’s mastery of grand, royal portraiture.