#fandom critical

[shyjusticewarrior]

At some point "fanfic can be as good as professional writing" became "fanfic should be as good as professional writing" and that's caused major damage to fandom spaces.

[hexcrystals]

there's no such thing as a gay ship that 'feels like a straight ship' btw you guys just have really specific ideas about how queer people should look and act in order to be valid and i hate to say it but it's giving 'we can always tell'

[faderifter]

for your story to have themes of empowerment and anti-bigotry it has to contain bigotry, btw. feminist and anti-racist themes can’t exist without misogyny and racism, explicit or metaphorical. your desire to scrub depictions of prejudice from fiction is regressive.

[mofsblog]

"This is some gay shit" Good. Silly. Fair enough. Doesn't inherently invalidate other interpretations of the relationship. Honestly yeah, it is kind of gay regardless of their canonical relationship status

"There's literally no platonic explanation for th-" WRONG!! KILLING YOU WITH AMATANORMATIVITY KILLING LOBSTERS 🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞��🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞

[abbotjack]

There’s something deeply toxic happening in fandom, and it’s not new, but it’s getting louder. A celebrity responds to a fan, likes a post, acknowledges that people care about their work, and suddenly it’s a crisis. Suddenly we’re throwing around words like “parasocial,” “inappropriate,” “they're too involved,” “this is making people uncomfortable.”

But uncomfortable for who, exactly?

Let’s stop pretending this is about 'safety' or 'boundaries'. It’s about visibility. It’s about control. It’s about the fact that some fans can’t handle not being the one who gets the attention. So they dress it up in concern, as if they’re protecting the community, when in reality what they’re doing is punishing both the artist and the fans who got acknowledged.

And the worst part is... it’s mostly women doing this to other women. Every single time. Policing whose post got liked. Who’s “too close.” Who’s “too much.” Who should be embarrassed for engaging in the space we’re all here to enjoy. And it’s not because we’re naturally competitive or catty or whatever lazy stereotype people love to throw at us. It’s because we’ve been taught, structurally, repeatedly, that there is not enough room for all of us.

Adrienne Rich wrote about this. Women beware women. That’s the system. That’s the mechanism. That’s how patriarchy maintains itself. Not just by suppressing women, but by making sure we do the work of suppressing each other. We turn every space into a silent ranking system. Who’s being noticed. Who’s acceptable. Who’s allowed to be loud. Who should shrink.

We’re doing that here. Right now. In fandom. Over digital scraps of attention from someone who, let’s be clear, owes us nothing.

That’s what people need to sit with. These celebrities do not owe you a response. They don’t owe you interaction. They don’t owe you access, or availability, or emotional labor. And when they do offer any of those things—when they respond with grace, or humor, or kindness—and your reaction is to police it, to shame them, or to shame the fans they interact with?

You are the problem.

The relationship between a fan and a celebrity is not transactional. You’re not owed access, closeness, or attention just because you streamed a show, retweeted a gif, or posted a headcanon. And the mindset of “if I’m not getting noticed, then no one should” isn’t righteous, it’s entitled. And when that entitlement gets turned against other women, it’s not just petty... it’s a repetition of the very hierarchies we claim to be pushing back against.

This is why so many spaces, especially fandoms led by women, become unbearable over time. Not because the content stops mattering, but because the community eats itself alive. The minute joy turns into hierarchy, we’ve already lost.

And I say this with love: fans need to take a step back and ask what they’re doing here. If your instinct is to tear someone down for being noticed, or to analyze every celebrity reply like it’s a breach of contract, you need to stop and ask why that’s your first response.

Because if all this energy, all this surveillance, all this suspicion, all this shaming, went toward interrogating the systems that taught us to hate each other for being visible... instead of weaponizing it against the girl who got a like from the celeb you admire, maybe we’d actually get somewhere.

Fandom doesn’t have to be this cruel. It could be a place of abundance. Of shared joy. Of mutual admiration. But not until we stop feeding women beware women. Not until we stop mistaking jealousy for moral clarity. Not until we remember that no one’s owed anything just because they’re watching.

[thinkingofausername]

i really wish simple things weren't so complicated within fandoms. a character can be problematic but interesting. a character can make a mistake but not be evil. a character can hold a position of authority and still be a victim. a character doesn't have to be perfect and pure and innocent to be a victim. a character doesn't have to be perfectly pure for you to like them. liking a character who's fucked up doesn't mean you support their every action. why is this so complicated

[sunsetsmakemesad]

Not gonna lie I kinda hate the compulsion in fandom to shove every relationship into rigid definition boxes. Every relationship is either parent-child, siblings or romantic. Come on. Relationships are so much more complex than that. Do you at least have friends.

[needtobehisprettyboy]

Normalize people who are "just" friends and recognizing that their relationship isn't less valuable than if they were together 🗣️‼️‼️

I think people forget that there are people irl who have a deeper relationship with their friends than their lovers—and vice versa but ofc everyone already knows that ugh. People desperately need the reminder that you don't have to be in love with your best friend for them to be your other half.

listen, sometimes it's more powerful for a fictional relationship to be a friendship precisely because friendship is devalued in comparison to romance. anyone can sacrifice themself for the love of their life. but for a friend? if anything, that kind of devotion can be even more moving than if the relationship is romantic. there's a real dramatic power to prioritising friendship in your narratives sometimes.

[snakeredbirdbatkatana]

Always remember, especially when writing superhero characters they would be more offended if you implied, they were homophobic, than implying their gay. 

You think Batman would be pissed you implied he takes it up the ass fuck no, but he would be mad if you thought he was homophobic he's got a Timmy to protect.

Spider-Man does not care if you imply Deadpool has fucked him. He would be more offended that you implied, It was Deadpool and not Johnny.

You think Nightwing gives a single fuck that you think he fucked flash? He's pissed though you said he didn't like gay people. Have you met his little brother cause he would love to introduce you to him.

Now I brought up, the associations of certain characters with others on purpose because if you're implying that Nightwing or Batman is homophobic, you're saying that they wouldn't like their son/brother.

If you're saying Spider-Man is homophobic, that would mean he hates many of his friends or allies.

Never mind, the fact that an actual superhero wouldn't be homophobic because that would be stupid.

But I see the arguments sometimes that will they've never interacted with a gay person but then if you read the comics you quickly realize that's just stupid and untrue.

Even if you get into like the antiheroes or the more morally gray characters, other than if they're like a pure villain, many of them would not give a single fuck.

I always see like the Ra's Al Ghul homophobia thing, and I think that has to be the most ridiculous one because if he's 600 years old, you seriously think he's never tried the same gender. Or if he likes power and prestige, how many painters or kings were flaming homosexuals.

Now I haven't read a punisher comic in a very long time, but I also don't think he's homophobic. I don't necessarily agree with the punishers overall morals because I feel like he views a mugger, in the same perspective as like a crime lord.

But like the red hood would not give a fuck if you think he's gay and he's 100% not homophobic.

There's really not a single Gotham vigilante that I think at all is a bigot. Truthfully I don't even think the joker would be homophobic. He is a horrible person. but his overall prerogative is not at all fueled by some form of prejudice.

I always see this narrative start up usually when the pride comics comes out, or when you have politicians preaching homophobia like it's their job. I never understand it because the basis of majority of these characters is some form of hope or belief in a better world and never in that dream is there hate.

I also really see this whenever we speak about Tim Drake because for a very long time, everyone thought he was bisexual and then it became Canon and it's like that came out of left field. But did it?

Which, even if I did what does it matter.

Also controversial take I find it interesting that the only actually canon gay Robin is the most hated. Never mind, the fact that the previous most hated Robin was the poor one who essentially believed rapists should get their due.

But that goes into the same realm of why all the female robins are forgotten.

Every single time I see Tim Drake hate, it's usually followed by well. He hasn't gotten his own story in a while. They have forgotten him. What does he matter anyone. I know we're not stupid. Why the fuck do you think that?

Why do you think a extremely popular character is written as a bisexual man and then manically we don't write him anymore. 2+2 = 4.

Now that's speculation at best, but let's be for real.

Or let's discuss that Batman has been reiterated so many times into movies, but we've never had Robin.

You mean the children who have a characterization that doesn't directly appeal to a male power fantasy. That giving Batman children that he when he is written the way he should be, goes against what is believed to be how father's should be.

Remember the reason we don't get an empathetic Batman like we should be is because that goes against what the male power fantasy is you can't have an empathetic kind Batman with his hoard of children who he loves so much and still get an alpha male that sells comics.

Just look at Superman. Only now are we getting a more comic accurate Superman and even then it's slightly controversial.

Or how about the few movies where we did get more of a kind of jokey fun Batman and Robin or even a Superman the movies now are treated almost as a laughing stock.

Every time I see comic discourse, I always in the back of my mind, have to physically remind myself that the reason we're seeing characters written like this is because it sells, we are catering and marketing to who we believe is the consumer.

Like don't be naïve there's a reason Nightwing is written almost as a womanizing, powerful attractive character.

There's a reason the more respectful characters tend to be treated as a joke or a comic relief. There's a reason those comic relief characters, tend to become extremely popular, especially with women.

Majority of media is not created for the people who will actually consume it. Remember, fandom is predominantly run by women and fandom ended up that way because the Cannon material wasn't geared towards the people who ended up actually interested in it. Supernatural was not written to appeal to the people who got invested in it.

There's also a reason fandom is treated pretty disrespectfully and it's not because oh they're being disrespectful not to say there aren't some specific issues but if it was all men, I guarantee you a03 wouldn't be whispered behind closed doors.

That's not to say, men aren't in the fandom, or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure we can all collectively agree. It definitely wasn't made as a way of catering to men.

Or Maybe I'm just too woke.

[theheartmold]

‘She wasn’t a good mother’ great are we evaluating this character trait as one of her many facets or are we just damning her for not being the most maternal womanliest woman who ever womaned

[callahanisms]

yellowjackets i know your writer's room is mostly, if not all, white people.

mari being pit girl? okay fine. full circle moment. i have accepted and liked this theory since i saw the pilot.

but season 3? is such a fucking shit storm that reinforces everything non-white fans have been saying for such a long time. treating non-white characters as disposable and sidelining these characters for white ones.

and also. did NO ONE think it would be weird if shauna was the antler queen and then the hair she's collected is mari's? is that not WEIRD when you consider the VERY LONG history of white people using the parts of non-white people as war trophies, as decorations, as literal objects?

i stopped watching when i heard lottie died because i'm just fed up with the way the non-white people are treated in this show. treated as plotlines, as disposable, as trophies. never as people. doesn't even get into how this bleeds into fandom discourse. and yellowjackets has always been racist, but s3 really is just mask off about it. and i feel like we should sit down and actually talk about it.

[anneapocalypse]

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

[joudama]

Gee, it’s such a mystery why people think Neve is acting hysterically but Lucanis has a perfectly reasonable reaction. I wonder why that could be…

acting like neve (because lbr it is literally always exclusively neve) was acting hysterical if you save treviso over minrathous is still like top 5 most laughably perplexing fandom complaints i have ever seen that woman could not have been more reasonable if you replaced her with my middle school guidance counselor after i stole a pack of gum from her desk

[theweeklydiscourse]

Literally, the biggest Rumi x Jinu shippers are the filmmakers, the artists, and the cast of Kpop Demon Hunter. They have been reposting a lot of Rumi x Jinu fanarts on their social media accounts and have publicly acknowledged that this relationship is supposed to be viewed as romantic. Like Maggie Kang (the director) has shared that Rumi and Jinu’s rooftop dates was the first thing they thought of and it helped greenlit the film. She even confirmed that Rumi is Jinu’s first, last and greatest love. Arden Cho (Rumi’s voice actress) has been very vocal on wanting Rumi to find Jinu so that they can be together, she has constantly commented about it.

Rumi and Jinu’s relationship is so essential in this film. And for some reason, there’s still discourse over it. Like I’m sorry to those who don’t like it but the overall intention on their relationship was always romantic from the very start and the filmmakers are actively supporting it. No amount of backlash and discourse would ever change how important this relationship is or dissuade the filmmakers from shipping it because it’s literally their idea.

Whenever a well-supported (and dare I say wholesome) enemies to lovers ship pops into existence, people who don’t like it start scrambling to make anything about it problematic. I understand not being fond of a popular ship, but it gets to a point where people just start reaching to the high heavens. Not to import Twitter discourse, but I recently saw someone claiming that Rumi’s jacket getting torn off by Jinu’s demons during the Takedown performance was sexual assault. This is the kind of inflammatory stuff that’s meant to dissuade people from shipping it, lest they be accused of endorsing something awful.

The backlash and discourse is always framed in a way that is intentionally salacious and designed to stimulate the imagination. When you assign that charge to a given moment, there is an underlying knowledge that people’s minds will imagine the worst possible meaning to compensate for its vagueness. This is combatted by the vocal support that the creators have shown, and I genuinely appreciate their efforts to make it known that romance is threaded through the film.

It’s even crazier when you see just how VANILLA Rumijinu is. Not only is it essential to the plot, they are also hardly enemies in the traditional sense. I mentioned it before, but I was genuinely shocked by how overtly romantic the film was, as well as the level of engagement from the creative staff. They want Rumijinu, and no inane discourse is going to change that.

[thekirammanjinx]

I'm convinced yall don't know how anything works but that's also neither here nor there. No the grey is not sentient you nob head, but it's a point of where it's applied. Some of yall close an eye the moment we get to the part where sevika/jinx released the grey on the entirety of piltover. Comparing that to the tactical precision of releasing it in only certain areas, closed off areas. Do you know how walls and isolation work?

Criminals are still human yes. But let's not forget there have been multiple actions of war committed by zaun to piltover. Let's not forget there are exigent circumstances that do not allow for Caitlyn and the strike force time to think. There was going to be a full on invasion on zaun where innocents would actually get caught in the crossfire. Nobody is saying gassing is okay, I have seen nobody say that, but yall continue to nibble at portions of the story and ignore the rest in order to try and prove your forced hatred on caitlyn. It's more work lying and doing all these mental gymnastics than simply watching what is given and shown to you.

Also! It's such a wild and classist/ignorant thing to say that people in zaun HAVE to resort to crime. Also a wildly incorrect view of s1 to say Vi and Co. were stealing to survive. Just saying you didn't watch the show would be less embarrassing for you.

[canonizzyhours]

RE: 542 - With respect, because I do get where you're coming from, I think you're doing something fandom does a lot where you're taking everything the creator says very seriously and very literally in contexts where there's just no reason to think he wasn't speaking more loosely and casually.

Take Jim emulating Izzy in the bsky special. You're right that obviously wasn't intended in the scripts of either season 1 or season 2; the only hint of it is Jim wearing Izzy's glove at the very end, which seems to have been something Vico asked for around the time the scene was filmed. But where did David ever claim that it was the original intention? Or, for that matter, that it's something he'd continue if he made a real filmed canonical version of season 3?

We know the bsky special contains some stuff that DJenks would want to use in a real season 3 (he was pretty explicit that he was serious about wanting to license You Only Live Twice) but we also explicitly know there were some ideas in there that he did not intend to use if season 3 happened for real: he explicitly said at TNUC that he had no intention of actually resurrecting Izzy from the gravy basket, and it's pretty unlikely that season 3's budget would allow for a full blown army of Rory Kinnears (or for that matter for Kevin Bacon in a role as seemingly big as Applejack, no matter how much he likes the show). We also know the bsky special is something David made up off the cuff to distract himself from having a baby in the NICU, not something he meticulously outlined ahead of time. Doesn't it make the most sense to assume that he didn't have a specific plan for what to do with Jim that would fit into the bsky thread, and he didn't have time to storybreak a fuller secondary-character arc, so he just decided to throw in this little joke that he knew would be kind of funny to people who'd seen Vico dress in Izzy drag before? And did not intend for anyone to think that was a serious intentional planned-all-along statement about Jim's arc?

The "Izzy is the lead of season 2" thing is similar. If there were a David-and-Vico panel at some con, and in the context of that panel David said something like "Jim is the lead of season 1," I wouldn't assume he was denying that Stede is the actual protagonist of season 1, or that Ed is the next most important character after Stede; I'd think he considered Stede and Ed being the actual leads something too obvious to need to clarify it, and that he meant Jim got the most important arc out of the OTHER characters that season.

Izzy definitely has the most prominent arc in season 2 out of the characters who aren't named Stede or Ed. I'm not bothered that David didn't say "aside from Ed and Stede, of course, but after them Izzy's the lead" because that's too obvious to need to point out! And I know this is what David thinks because it's how he's talked about season 2 everywhere EXCEPT in this context of being specifically asked about Izzy and Izzy's importance to the story. In his solo panel he barely talked about Izzy and instead focused on Ed & Stede. In his panel at Behind Our Flag he talked even MORE about Ed & Stede and even LESS about Izzy. When asked about his writing process he focused fully on the Ed and Stede relationship arc. When asked about his plans for each season he says season 1 was about Stede's midlife crisis and season 2 was about Ed's.

That's not how he'd be talking if he honestly thought Izzy was a more important character than Ed and Stede for fully half of the show! But it makes complete sense if he thinks Ed & Stede being the actual protagonists is so obvious it didn't even occur to him that anyone would interpret "Izzy is the lead of season 2" as meaning "Izzy is more important in season 2 than ANY other character including Ed & Stede." I really feel sorry for creators in this position where they can't just speak kind of loosely off the cuff without fandom assuming everything they say is a serious precisely-phrased Word Of God statement about canon that has to be analyzed deeply.

#554.

related posts: #542