#positive thinking for bitchy haters: a seminar by M. Utilitycaster

[utilitycaster]

Like, i get it that people can be frustrated that something they really like on a character, (ie. Glasses on Imogen) is not canon, and i get making shitposts about it or venting for whatever reason

The problem lies when people make a whole thread about how a player doesn't know their character and their canon decisions are bad somehow? And it's not like Laura hasn't acknowledged the glasses hc, she has several times in th show, she just doesn't share that canon for whatever reason she might have

It's a big problem with actual play podcasts that the viewers take away from the player's agency to play their own canon, CR has a big breach between the audience and the players, plus the fact that they are professional actors, so viewer opinions rarely influence the characters in a meaningful way. But MAN is it frustrating to see

So I agree with much but not all of this. Because here's the thing: this is not actually a breach of player agency. Like, to be clear, I think the people doing this sometimes believe that if they're loud and obnoxious enough they'll get what they want, but in the end what this means is that you might notice that the players of any podcast/show that's large enough that they don't rely on Twitter for connections anymore have become really hard to reach on Twitter. Like, no matter how much art people make of Imogen in glasses, in the end, Laura decides, and she can just block people she doesn't like. And frankly, even when Critical Role was live? So much was quietly decided behind the scenes. Like, Taliesin had decided Molly was not a character who could be resurrected from well before Molly's death; no matter how much some sad rando on Twitter screams and cries even to this day, it won't change that.

I think it's okay to wish your fanon were canon - I mean, technically that's all shipping is, right - but I think there's a point where someone with a reasonable relationship to fiction says "man, that sucks that this went in a direction other than the one I wanted" or even "I don't like how this was written/played out" but to say it's objectively incorrect is just...you don't know what's correct! There isn't necessarily an objectively correct answer!

I also think that while Laura creating Imogen as a character who doesn't wear glasses is not an example of this, two of the biggest examples of entitled fans I can think of recently are the current ACOC D20 debacle, and the incredibly misogynist and obnoxious way people talked about Madeleine Roux's Lucien book. The people screaming the loudest have all, truly, been people who created fanon, and who then saw someone else be hired to essentially create sanctioned canon as a collaborator and instead of saying "oh cool! someone else playing in my same space doing their thing" they threw a massive tantrum because the other person had different ideas. It's literally just people who are bad at understanding that other people exist separately from them and have their own feelings and ideas. Coincidentally, people who lack this kind of understanding also tend to come up with really stupid ideas.

Honestly that's kind of the guiding principle behind the vast majority of fandom bullshit:

People want to simultaneously have the scrappy independence and cool fuck-the-man vibes of the underdog [fanon], and the actual power of those in charge [canon]. Obviously, this is impossible. If you realize this you'll be able to strike a balance. You will also understand a lot of real-world political and social dynamics on the micro and macro level.

I keep going to metaphors of early childhood here and some of this is because I have three younger siblings so I've seen (and been a part of) this countless times, and some of it is because truly all of this is full-grown adults acting like the worst kid in preschool who is definitely going to have to repeat it because they are not kindergarten ready but like, the vibe is when a child is not playing with a toy but also if anyone else touches the toy they scream bloody murder.

Anyway though as I said yesterday, yeah it's frustrating because you're watching people who are, as I think I said once, like a dog in a crate where the door is open but they're too fixated on trying to somehow push through the bars to turn around. But also it's a great source of mostly meaningless schadenfreude, because like, I'd feel bad if someone actually had bad things happen to them but if like, a ship doesn't happen, or Imogen doesn't wear glasses? That's just funny and enjoyable. I think an important skill in life is to say "yes it's incredibly annoying how much people are whining about this, but also they didn't get what they wanted, which is very funny."