#none of this takes into account 2010's 'shock humor' that's it's own beast

[worldismyne]

The fandom culture in the past was a time and we're still learning...

This is 100% my opinion based on my internet experience growing up.

A common take I see coming up is that late 00s early 10s fan culture was cringe and problematic. It's usually to do with things like Yaoi fan-girls and genderbend. (there's probably others that fall in this category, but these were the main ones that came to mind.) I just think there's something to be gained by asking why these online phenomena happened rather than writing it off as bad and don't look back.

This is a something I've been thinking about a lot lately as someone who grew up with the internet.

Which is that, at that time, a lot of us were kids/teens seeking representation. We were growing up in a time where trans/queer characters weren't readily on TV. We didn't have the language to describe the dysphoria or ostracization we felt; or a jumping off point to explore things like gender expression safely.

So we took to the wild west that was the internet, we came across fetishized examples of what we were searching for and latched onto it without critically analyzing why.

It led to people regurgitating foreign vocabulary we didn't fully comprehend and while others tried to co-opt it into what they found into actually were looking for. And yes, I mean regurgitate, whole and unanalyzed, fiercely defended without an alternative readily available.

Because the truth is sometimes Stacy, age 13; was looking for a role model on how to live as a queer man; and now is a married 20-something that really doesn't want to think about the years they latched onto uke/seme junk when really they were looking for gender expectations for cis/queer adult life.

That genderbend is very appealing to a young person that didn't realize they were gender fluid themselves; and liked the idea of their favorite characters living in both spaces simultaneously but was forced to share the same spaces with shippers that just wanted to 'no-homo' certain ships.

It was hard to look for stuff without getting bombarded by overly fetishized stuff made by straight creators for straight consumers. And adults were reinforcing that it was all part and parcel irl. (Legit wasn't allowed to say lesbian at the dinner table growing up, because the very idea of a queer relationship was assumed to be inherently sexual in nature by my parents' generation; we see this still argued about at Disney all the time)

Fandom was and, in some ways, still is one of the easiest 'safe' (as is safe from family) places to explore those topics of identity and idealized futures.

I think as my generation's gotten older, we've realized that we need to create safe places in fandom explore queerness. That it's important to divorce queer stories from fetish (though they aren't always mutually exclusive. I's the distinction that matters). And there's been more of a push for genuine queer rep on tv (especially kid's media)

I've found tumblr to be relatively kind compared to other platforms like tiktok, or amino; but some fandom tags are still a homogenous mix of nsfw, sfw, and fetish.

I 100% agree it's on creators to properly tag their stuff. To help people filter out things they don't want to see. Things like safe-search only work if human beings cooperate.

But I also sincerely urge people to not to mindlessly consume fandom content. It's a sure-fire way to accidently absorb notions/vocabulary you don't fully identify with or understand. Normalization is a passive action, not a conscious decision.

Those bad habits in art/writing/etc, they're hard to shake unless you look back and critically analyze why you like/hate the things you do. And it's still really easy to pick up flawed ideas wandering around anywhere on the internet. It's a constant process, and everyone goes through it regardless of age or orientation. Internet culture is always changing

Also, look back at what you make. The commonalities between your OCs and yourself. What about those ideas actually appeal to you? What ideas are you recycling out of habit because that's the way every other thing like it was made? It's the only way to make new spaces/tags/etc for what you want, versus settling for what's already there.