#fandom weirdness

[tyxaar]

You know, a phenomenon in fandom I rarely see talked about is how often fandoms just sorta adopt bands, Usually indie stuff. Tally Hall and TMA, MCYT(particularly Life SMP) and The Crane Wives, Lemon Demon and uh… a lot of fandoms, and a bunch more I don’t know. It must be really quite amusing from the artist’s perspective. Like imagine you’re just making music one day then find out that a good chunk of your audience likes watching block people on youtube go through elaborate unscripted death game drama.

[touchstoneaf]

You know what baffles me? It's actually two things, but it's both related to Doctor Who's fandom. Clearly I've been here for a very short time, so I guess I just missed something? But frankly it makes no sense to me when ppl argue between NineRose and TenRose. Like... it only matters when you are picking which era to write/read/draw in! Sure, their interactions are different, but why would anyone look at the two of them and think one is better than the other, when they are literally the same two people loving each other in beautiful ways?! It's a continuation of the same story, part of the arc of the exact same love affair! You can't take one away from the other! Yes their interactions have a slightly different cant, but you can literally hear moments where you could hear Nine saying a line that Ten said, or vice versa! It's just...

I don't get it. And why in the hell would somebody claim the age gap exists with Nine but not with Ten?! They're the same age? They're both 900 years old? Just, like, what?! Ten specifically acts younger because he's trying to make Rose (and Jackie) feel more comfortable with the relationship, but that's all! (I also write ships with aliens and humans and vampires and humans, so at some point I think the age gap thing just does stops being relevant, and it's just about experiences... but that's just my mileage. But IMHO you can't complain about it with one iteration but not the other of the same person!)

The other thing that baffles me in this fandom is people arguing about the whole Tentoo thing. It seems I've missed some kind of historical quarrel or something? Like... I personally don't prefer it for a couple of reasons, but it's not (as ppl seem to want to accuse others) because I don't think Tentoo is really the Doctor, or whatever ppl like to think is the basis, so stop accusing me of that! That's not the reason at all!! He *obviously* is, and just by the way he is able to say those three words to Rose without hesitating (and of course a little bit of anger), they were obviously going for a sort of combination of Nine and Ten so that Rose would get the best of both worlds there. And that's great. My issue with it is just that Ten prime has to go off by himself after, when Rose told him she would never let him do that, which... My main issue with that ending is just that Rose is only like 22 years old, and I don't think she needs to be settling down and having a kid already, and I think people shortchange her character when they say she only wanted to take him somewhere and settle down with him and quit traveling, when she *clearly* loved every minute of her life with him, and was the happiest she had ever been when she was out traveling with him, so I feel like it's character assassination to say she wanted to stop entirely and go get a house and have a baby with him right away. I'm sure she wouldn't have minded it after a little while, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted a baby at 23, I'm just saying. So my issue with it (though I understand why they had to do it, that they were doing their best to give Billie the correct sendoff with what they had), is that I think that it breaks the character's promise and her clear intention to stay with the Doctor who's stuck traveling... but...

Look. I don't think that the argument about whether Tentoo is "really the Doctor" makes any sense at all. I mean like it's just not applicable to my conceptualization of the characters, so why are am I getting accused of that when it's not even a consideration for me?! I understand for instance arguing about the shape of the triad between NineJackRose (or the existence of TenJackRose) and whether or not you think that was going on (which I don't think is even an argument either, it was at least emotionally happening, & whether any physical action was happening as well is up to interpretation! But why is that an argument, again? It's clearly there, and as to what you think the fallout is... that this entirely up to viewer's mileage and how it varies!).

Is it just me alone by myself thinking that none of these stupid wars even make any sense or should exist? Am I crazy, that i don't understand the purpose of these nonsensical arguments, or the necessity to keep having them at this point, years on?!

What am I missing, here?!

[just-prime]

Here's the thing about the Castiel confession that I don't think people from the-fandom-not-to-be-named (lest they find this and start sending me death threats) understand...

No one knew it was coming. In no one's mind were we all going into Despair (15x18) thinking "Oh I know, Cas is going to confess his love to Dean." We never thought it because it was never something that was on the table to begin with. It was one of those things of where we knew that they loved each other, and honestly that was fine. After 11 years of dealing with those two dumbasses, this was nothing new. I didn't even watch it live because I was like "You know, it's election night, I need to get some sleep" and it wasn't until @sledgehamur called me and was like "you need to watch it now, and you need to not look at your phone until you are done" that I was like "Aw shit, something big happened. Cas probably died, that's probably it."

But then the speech happened and we were all gobsmacked. And again, 11 years...we are a monster of a fandom that has a variety of sleeper agents who hadn't watched the show in 8 years but tuned back in because of the immediate collective scream unleashed by the active fandom.

So this is all a really round about way of saying that it's really really adorable that fans think their little firefighters are going to 'outdo destiel' and therein lies the problem. All of them are going into the Nov 5th episode (titled Confessions) with expectations and entitlement to their two faves are going to start making out on screen. And I don't know if feels like the ST people screaming about queerbaiting again...

All in all, if your already canonically bi character dumps his canonically queer boyfriend just to be with a character that he's been shipped with more but has no actual set up with whatsoever...

That isn't Destiel 2 : Electric Boogaloo, that's just crap writing.

But then again, this is why I watch everything to do with this show from at least 4 miles away with a telescope and from behind an electrified fence with a lab coat on and a scientific notebook in hand.

Well, I hope this makes sense. It were very much shower thoughts I put down on the page as rambles and my one hope this validates someone with a buddie stan in their life who's going on and on and on about how it's going to be just like how it was in 2020 without actually understanding any of the context behind it.

[wishcamper]

I’ve noticed folks who have lots of complaints about fan works in the ACOTAR fandom - whether antis or ship wars or AI or whatever it is - generally are not contributing their own works or supporting people who do.

Like there’s this dissonance between those who see themselves as active contributors in a community, whether through making art or engaging with artists, and those who show up to consume content and then complain when they’re not being given the thing they want.

It’s honestly kind of a bummer to see people who don’t contribute to the fandom spend time complaining instead of figuring out how to create the spaces they want to be in or engaging with artists who do create things they like.

Idk does this make sense. Like is this a thing or am I on one

[samasmith23]

Sometimes fandom debates just baffle me... aka, “Judas Traveller vs. Carlie Cooper”

I remember awhile back when Linkara did his review of the Spider-Man: Clone Saga opening arc “Power & Responsibility,” I saw quite a few people in the comments section of that particular video debating over which Spidey character they felt was worse: Judas Traveller or Carlie Cooper?

A debate which... originally quite surprised me when I first encountered it...

If you don’t know who Carlie Cooper is, she’s a police officer and forensics expert who was named after Joe Quesada’s daughter, and was introduced at the very end of the infamous Spider-Man: One More Day (aka, my most personal HATED comic of all-time...) as a potential new love interest for Peter Parker. Because of this, a lot of longtime Spider-Man fans seem to really HATE Carlie’s character, with many of them going as far calling her "an annoying Mary Sue/Carlie Sue" (BTW, "Mary Sue" is a meaningless and misogynistic phrase that's been weaponized by toxic Comicsgater & FandomMenace chuds...).

Now me personally, I don’t have much of an opinion about Carlie as a character since my only real exposure to her was in Dan Slott's Superior Spider-Man. And honestly... I enjoyed her just fine there. I had no real strong opinions about her character but appreciated her subplot in that series wherein she was one of the few to discover the mind-swap before later being turned into one of the Green Goblin’s minions, and Osborn learned about Otto possessing Peter’s body when he stole Carlie’s journals.

And interestingly enough, Carlie she hasn’t been seen much in the comics since the ending of Superior Spider-Man, where she now has goblin eyes due to remnants of Osborn’s serum.

But yeah, I don’t have much of an opinion of Carlie Cooper, so I neither like nor dislike her, and would still say that Judas Traveller is a far worse character since not only is he incredibly out of place as a Spider-Man villain since he's initially presented as this god-like immortal being (SPOILERS: Traveller was later retconned into just being a mutant who suffered a severe nervous breakdown when his ability to to alter both others and his own perceptions of reality awakened...), but his motivations of wanting to study "the true nature of good and evil" are incredibly weak and vague, and he ultimately contributes NOTHING to the overall Clone Saga narrative.

Even Spider-Man assistant editor Glen Greenberg stated during the online essay "The Life of Reilly" (which chronicles all the behind-the-scenes events surrounding The Clone Saga), that NOBODY working on the Spider titles at the time had any idea who or what Traveller's deal was supposed to be:

And yet weirdly enough, I still saw commenters arguing that Carlie was the worse of the two characters, even though from what I can tell she actually had clearly defined goals and motivations as a character. I sadly cannot say the same for Judas Traveller...

Still though, it does kinda say something when Otto Octavius' love interest from Superior Spider-Man, Anna Maria Marconi, is a much more popular and beloved new character among Spider-Man fans than Carlie was...

[anidala-for-ever]

Oh, I remember that one! Good times.

I have seen some tags saying Lan and Wei changed the rules of ao3 (but i have lost who said it) so I hope is ok if i ask in here in case any mod knows how that happened? (or any of the followers) i am not very familiar with that book/show

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian (you wouldn't call them just Lan and Wei, those are their family names) are the subjects of the infamous fanfiction Sexy Times with Wangxian. STwWX had over 4,400 tags, and the author would deliberately add more tags in an attempt to clog people's feeds as much as they could, including adding as many popular fandom tags as possible to put the fic on more screens. You couldn't report it for mistagging, either, because the author was conscientious about only adding tags that appeared in some way in the fic.

Anyway, it was the reason that ao3 eventually added a limit to how many tags people could put on their fic, and it lives on in infamy in the memory of the userbase. Here's a zoomed-out screenshot:

[purplefungieater]

ur cute wolverine girl date on valentines, dont let her drink too much.

[one-real-wrimonkey]

Dipper and Mabel go back to California and discover that almost nothing on Gravity Falls tv is available outside of Gravity Falls.

Ducktective does not exist outside of Gravity Falls.

None of the silly monster movies exist.

It’s a crushing realisation. And a mystery to solve.

Eventually, with Fords help, they work out that Gravity Falls is picking up trans-dimensional tv signals and all their tv channels are local or coming through wormholes.

Stan starts recording their favourite shows and movies on VHS/VCR right away and mailing them to California.

[artisimpossible]

People on here are always like "fuck capitalism, why can't things be weird anymore" and then write up a whole dissertation about how the biggest IPs need to change to be weirder.

Like, you are so close. You are so close to getting the point. "Big" IPs *can only exist because they are normal*. They will *never* be weird. They will *never* do what you want. Go find some smaller IPs. Bring back discovery. Bring back never having heard of a book before you buy it. Bring back watching obscure anime online that none of your friends know about. Bring back trying new things, even if they're bad or cheaply made. That is how you get *weird*.

[anidala-for-ever]

I agree with you and we do see it. In AOTC after having nightmares of his mother he goes to meditate in the terrace. In ROTS he is also seen to be meditating after his nightmares about Padme. He doesn't refuse to meditate and scorn people's teachings, it's just that meditation isn't the panacea fandom thinks it is.

Congratulations for your accomplishment as a master, Obi-Wan.

(I headcanon that Anakin doesn't meditate at all anymore, just pretends to because meditation is painful for him, it's too much force)

[tadfools]

You guys are commenting on the fics you read right? You’re at least leaving kudos on the Astarion smut and the pairs that have less than 20 fics for them too? You’re bookmarking stories you really like that are still being updated and ones that haven’t been touched in over a year right?

You know that even the smallest interactions are like cocaine to fic writers right? You understand how important a string of emoji hearts left behind on a chapter at three am is right?? Right????

You’re treating AO3 like a community and not a content factory….right?

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Doodle dump ft. Ya girl Vanessa

[nutmeggery]

actually I will say something about this:

setting up a romance line but waiting until one of the actors is a freshly legal adult before executing it is creepy, actually, especially when the co-star is 15 years older

[anidala-for-ever]

I'm like it's definitely okay to be angry people screwed you over in the past. It's definitely okay to want recognition for your efforts that you barely get any praise for. That recognition should not take the form Anakin wants ( also according to the ROTS novel he wants it so he can access Jedi texts that may have information in how to stop Padme from dying not because he wants power over others) but that's just lack of wisdom that comes from being 22 and filled with trauma. By no means should he have killed anyone over this.

ngl to y’all when i first saw revenge of the sith i was like [obi-wan sigh] anakin. who would put u on the council, let alone make u a master? ur like this 👌 close to falling apart at the seams at all times. this is kind of Bad and Ambitious and Power-Hungry. u should definitely never be in charge of people. than a) i turned 22 & realized that’s just what being 22 is like and b) after watching star wars: the clone wars (2008-2014) i was like. 😳😬🤮🥴 wow ok huh. so there’s this fabulous duo that’s running like 75% of the war effort across an entire galaxy nonstop for three years and gets the brunt of 98% of the council’s stupid-ass decisions as well as the rest of the galaxy’s bullshit (like that one time the Black Death came back Except Blue This Time or that other time with the literal brain worms eating brains that everyone said “oh, the perils of war” about) and that out of two (2) people only one (1) of these people actually has any say about it. despite. the fact they have. the same job. & one time the council actually fucking said “hey, obi-wan, go fake your own murder & wear your murderer’s face,” obi-wan says yep ok and yoda absofuckinglutely unironically thought that their resident murderous twenty-year-old would take this well. and that’s just. a long weekend with the jedi council. so now when i watch episode iii: revenge of the sith and anakin wants to be on the council and be a master. i say: yeah ok that tracks.

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!