#not always there are plenty of theraputic blorbos I don't See That Way but they're still useful for working through shit

[pyreflydust]

It's worse than just people not knowing how to deal with the nature of storytelling because at least some of the people who don't get upset about not knowing anything will instead make up what they think is going to happen. Which, that used to feel fun! It can still be fun in smaller groups or in the right fandoms. But it's not fun when it's really the same kind of person who calls literally every string not being tied a plothole because those people will instead think of the way they think the story is going or that they want it to go and call it bad writing when it goes somewhere else, even if that somewhere else also made sense.

And to add to op's point about shipping, at least part of the bullshit shipping drama comes from people who project to ship vs people who just want interesting stories and character dynamics. It's not that there is no overlap between the two, but the people who are primarily projecting seem to think that everyone ships the way they do. If you ship something that would be unhealthy they think you're saying that's something you want, and always seem to act like you're either romanticizing abuse or that you're putting yourself in the abuser's position for whatever reason. Even in cases where they're not attached to either character in a ship this can lead to extra bullshit drama and discourse due to people not understanding others get different things from stories that they do. (I've seen someone say that instead of shipping an abusive ship you should just ship the character with a self insert which made a lot of bullshit discourse make more sense.)

But yeah it's frustrating because projecting onto blorbos is a great therapy tool! You can see the best of yourself and learn to love the worst of yourself and work through shit that you need to work through in order to heal. But not being able to acknowledge that you're doing that takes away some of the good and puts you at risk for starting fights with people who have different headcanons or even who adhere to canon. I'd even go so far as to say one of the better ways of doing this is to not heap the entire burden on a single blorbo because you're less likely to want one to be Literally You if you have more characters who have different pieces of you in them.

A lot of all of this feels like it's coming from people who misunderstand the transformative part of fandom. Writing meta and theories isn't about getting the right answer as to where the story is going. Writing fic, shipping or otherwise, isn't about writing what literally everyone who likes the source wants to read nor do you have to read every fic like it's the source material's expanded universe. No fandom is a hivemind, and the big open internet being what it is now means you're going to see a lot of people with different wants and needs from their stories and headcanons and theraputic blorbo projecting. Yeah it can be frustrating when it feels like they've gotten the characters so fucking wrong -- and sometimes they will have -- or where they're into things you're not into, but that's what blocking and blacklisting and maybe petty vague posting is for.

the longer i stay in fandom, the longer i think a huge amount of bad takes and discourse come from an... abundance of identifying with a character

to be clear, i don't think it's bad to identify with a character. far from it! i think that's part of what makes fiction so powerful.

and it's only logical people often attach to a blorbo because they're just like me, for real. a person will see some element of themselves-- their race, their gender, their sexuality, their hobbies, their family life, their specific flavour of neurodivergence-- and something just resonates. it gives them a way to explore and name this important part of themselves, a part they maybe didn't even know existed before it.

and everything is well and good until some split between them and the character shows up

because of course, no character, except an explicit self-insert written by yourself, will ever be a perfect 1:1 for your own experiences. so sooner or later-- maybe in canon, maybe in a fanwork-- your blorbo diverges from your lived experience in a huge way.

I think this is why shipping culture in particular gets so toxic. While it is by no means the only way to indulge with shipping, a significant portion is 'if i was in that character's shoes, i would choose X'. the fight becomes for your own self-identity.

but this gets expanded in other ways. a character who is revealed to be black when the majority of the fandom had just assumed they were white. or revealed to be queer, or maybe the 'wrong' flavour of queer. or fuck, even some more innocuous part of their backstory, one that's nonetheless so meaningful for SOMEONE, but now it feels like the story is saying, fuck you, we're doing something else

i don't know. i just feel acknowledging this perceived-attack-on-identity helps me understand why people react it what seems to be such outsized way to canon and fanworks alike.

at the same time, i think it's a really important thing to check in yourself.

it's nice, to see a character who you identify with. who resonates with for being like you. but it's also nice to acknowledge and appreciate the way characters are not like you at All. how great it is to get insight into this totally different lived experience. and to muse on how wonderful that recognition might be for someone who does have that background.