idk. i think fandom could use a lot less of “every person’s interpretation of a text is valid and true!” and more of “reading a text means taking all parts of it into account, including the bits you don’t like or the pairings you don’t ship, to consider what the full picture is and what the larger themes are.”
projecting your fantasies onto a text, hyperfocusing on the characters you think are hot/shippable and building entire theories based on micro interactions that don’t take other competing dynamics and plotlines into account isn’t “analysis” it’s projection and fantasy. which is fine, but take responsibility for your desires and your fantasies instead of making fandom inhospitable for everyone. some readings of a text are plain wrong, others miss or willfully erase vital context just to rationalize romantic pairings. these are not accurate readings of the text. doesn’t mean they should be attacked or shamed, but neither can you expect people to validate every single headcanon and shipper fantasy as a legitimate “reading” of the text either.
It feels like it’s all part of a general trend in fandom of commodification of art and storytelling, turning texts into products to be consumed, to be judged primarily on how well they deliver the specific emotional experiences that the reader desires. Which isn’t like inherently bad or anything but it is a really transactional and self-centered way to engage with art.
like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom. they can and they do, and many are perfectly great people.
but if you’re an adult, say, in your mid to late 20s or older, especially if you’re in a fandom that’s filled mostly with teenagers, you do need to be careful about how you interact with young people in fandom.
you need to be careful about the content you produce or share, and if you do something that people take issue with, you need to be prepared to address that in an honest and meaningful way, instead of blocking the young people who are telling you you’ve done something wrong and going on a rant about how “it’s just fiction” and “ship and let ship” and “do whatever you want” and “i’m too old for this.”
if you’re an adult in fandom, you need to be able to recognize how the content you produce might affect young people, and honestly, you should be able to show maturity when dealing with it, because you are still an adult talking to many people who are literal children.
many of those young people will, by default, view you as a sort of authority figure based on your age alone, as that’s what they’re used to. be careful of the lessons you teach them.
Hm. Okay. Here’s the thing.
We all know who you’re talking about and which situations you’re talking about. What you really have an issue with isn’t anything to do with anyone’s age, it’s about people producing things that other people find hurtful, then not responding the way the hurt people would like them to when called out on it. That can and does happen anywhere, regardless of the ages of the people involved. It’s a separate issue that should be discussed and dealt with.
And yes, in some of those recent situations, the ages of the offenders or the offended were brought into the discussion, by both sides at different times. The age difference does complicate things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the main issue.
You may be thinking “why do you care if I focus on age, it was a salient part of the argument for me, you’re trying to defend adults who don’t care how their words hurt children!” But here’s the thing.
You may not realize this, but in other fandoms adults have been doxxed, have been threatened, have been outed because they were creating things that someone, somewhere deemed “dangerous for minors.”
Adults who were creating things that were not meant for minors, that were openly and blatantly tagged as being NSFW, explicit, as containing triggering material. I’ve even seen people who weren’t even creating the offending material being harassed, bullied, and threatened, for daring to stand up for the people who were. Not even just online, but in person. I’ve been a victim of it myself, though not to the extent that I’ve seen many others go through.
All because a segment of the fandom decided that because certain content could be dangerous for minors, it should never, ever be posted anywhere a minor might possibly read it. Adults who do post it are responsible for every bad effect it could possibly have on anyone who reads it and are horrible people for not willingly taking on that responsibility.
I know the situations you’re talking about are different. In many of those situations, adults chose to interact with the minors who were complaining about them, and yeah, when you’re choosing to directly interact with a minor you need to tread carefully.
But once you go down the “adults in fandom are responsible for the minors in fandom” road, if lots of people start clinging to that mindset, that is where it can lead. And that is an extremely serious issue. It can literally destroy careers and ruin lives.
I am not in this or any other fandom to produce content for minors. I have asked many times for minors not to follow me; I don’t block them, but I know quite a few people who block any minor who follows them. I produce enough SFW content that I don’t mind minors being able to, say, reblog it from others on their dash, but I do not want them following me and getting explicit content directly from me, full stop. If it becomes an issue, I will start blocking people.
If you’re a minor, I’m old enough to be your mother. But I’ve got my own kid, and I’m not in fandom to babysit anyone else. When I create or reblog content, I do not and will not take the presence of minors into account when doing so. Because that is not my job.
Now, right now I’m choosing to get involved in this discussion, which will involve people much younger than me, including minors. So yeah, I’m being careful about what I say and how I say it. And I agree that any adult who willingly engages in conversation with minors needs to do the same.
But I simply can’t agree with your last two paragraphs. Those “literal children” already have parents. If their own parents aren’t monitoring what media they consume, aren’t having conversations with them about problematic messages in media, it certainly isn’t my job to do so. Period.
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stop seeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
How people interact with oppressed groups they aren’t a part of who complain about their representation of those oppressed groups is an entirely separate issue that is not about the age of the people on either side. Age can complicate it, especially in that it can be difficult to communicate across a generation gap when people on either side have such enormously different experiences. I think that that has caused some problems.
But any adult who is not willingly choosing to interact with a minor is not responsible for minors who consume their content, and conflating the two issues is downright dangerous.
@porcupine-girl nailed it 100% but this especially bears repeating:
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stopseeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
Fandom is a good way for teenagers to learn how to interact with people in different age groups as peers. Because that’s what we are, we are fandom peers posting on the same web sites and obsessing over the same shows and no one in fandom has any authority over anyone else (no matter how much some people might try to claim it). I am not your teacher, your parent, your babysitter, or anyone in any position of authority over you or anyone with a responsibility for taking care of you. Nor am I willing to take on that role. The vast majority of the billions of adults in the world fit that description. Only a very few, ones you know in real life, are responsible for you personally - and soon that number will be none as you become an adult yourself.
I block anyone with an age under 18 listed in their profile if they try to follow me - not with any animosity, I’m just not interested in interacting with kids on a fandom level. This is a completely valid option and I think it’s a wise one.
Plus the original post here is predicated on the assumption that fandom belongs to people in their early 20s and younger and the rest of us are just hangers on. Sorry baby, look at the demographics; you’re the minority. We’re not in your house. I, for one, am happy to interact with anyone I have interests in common with and bond over those interests; I think people of all ages have exciting perspectives and interesting minds. But I don’t want to be treated like a second class citizen by anyone, and as said above, I am interested in interacting AS PEERS ONLY. I ain’t your mommy and I have enough people IRL trying to leech emotional labor off me, I got none for strangers on the internet.
I have watched my friends raise their kids in fandom. Literally. Raise. Their. Kids. I’ve watched young things I met carried in arms toddle, walk, run, be 8, 18, 28, marry, come to a convention carrying young things in their arms.
It was assumed that everyone who knew the parent would keep a vague eye on the child because friends don’t let friends’ little ones run into traffic. But at NO POINT was it ever assumed or expressed that the adult fans had to stop being adult fans talking about adult things. If a minor walked into the “How to write explicit bondage” panel, then someone gently suggested that this was not the place for the kid to be. If the kid found the dick pics in the art show, they were told “go ask Mommy what ‘slash’ means.”
I get that the OP wants to protect children, but while it’s my job to make sure someone too little to take care of themselves doesn’t get hurt, it has NEVER, through three generations of fandom, been my job to be anyone’s actual parent or to stop adulting around adults.
Oh, and the line “I’m not saying adults don’t have a place in fandom; they can and they do” - that line? Child, ADULTS BUILT FANDOM. We created the cons and the fanzines and the webrings and the clubs and the fan sites and the VCR tape swaps and the letter writing campaigns and the podcasts. We maintain the fan sites and the fic repositories and the conventions and the rest. Did you think those things just spontaneously evolved? Fuckin’ A we have a place in the culture that we built!
I don’t get the attitude teenagers have these days regarding this dynamic. When I was young and first getting into fandom, I was very aware that most people were older than me, wiser than me, had more experience than me, and were not beholden to hold my hand or babysit me. I engaged with adult material at my own risk, and my own blatant lying about my age.
I get that the prevalence and omnipresence of the internet allows more young people to be online and interact these days so it’s easier to assume the person on the other side of the screen might be your age, but…no? Most people in fandom are old af.
What do you kids think you just stop having interests and being social about them when you turn 25? Pfffft that’s rich.
This. Also when have adults ever been seen as authority figures? Not in my generation “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was the rule. I’m over 30 and wonder if kids should even trust me. lol They seem to know more explicit content than I did and aren’t afraid to tell anyone off especially when they are infatuated and an adult tried to tell them about consent and healthy relationships. I used to write risqué letters and role play for Japanese college students when I was 15, I know the differences of a fantasy relationship vs. a real relationship, which sadly many do not. Online was 100% for adults in the 1990’s, it was a playground, cheaper than Vegas. You could be anyone and it was the place to go to learn from unappologetic adults where indeed you would be told off for being a child and annoying. It was wear masks dropped. You learned things your parents would never tell you even as an adult. People were openly every thing.
Also you can thank the BL, Yaoi, Yuri adult fandom for having anime in the Western Hemisphere period, yhey used to bootleg that stuff from Jalan, and all the growth that followed from it into other fandoms.
And for the entire fandom concept you can thank #Actually Autistic Adults and teens who the originally created this environment for them to share and be openly autistic before NT’s caught on to it.
There’s more misogyny and less feminism that I see in online fan spaces..a lot more nepotism and less reaching out to learn from each other. I don’t shelter anyone, I wasn’t raised that way so the concept is foreign. It doesn’t mean I think there shouldn’t be safe places for children or that I’ll openly have objectionable content, but this is my space like the adults before me that I had to endure. lol It’s one of the reasons why I am only now returning to any kind of fandom. I’m an adult and don’t have to put up with that shit.
For the past year I have been working on a project I am SO EXCITED to share with all of you! My first ever Podcast, Let’s Talk Fandoms is officially ready to be heard by everyone. The first episode, “Let’s Talk Cartoons” goes LIVE December 16th.
Find us on all podcast streaming sites and on Instagram @Letstalkfandomspodcast and Twitter @FandomsPodcast
-all men are gay (unless they’re flirty in which case they’re bi)
everyone in the notes is so god damn stupid this is a criticism of bi/lesbo/aphobic fandom culture you shouldn’t be AGREEING with the stereotypes
I made a graph
YEAH THIS IS LITERALLY IT…
Yeppp, this is the trope that the kids in 2030 are going to be judging the 2020’s harshly for, just as we now look back at some of those 2000’s/2010’s yaoi tropes and wince.
Skinny/younger boy? Bottom, secret crossdresser (but not trans), submissive in the bedroom. Muscular/older guy? Aggressive top, the man of the relationship. Lesbians? We’ve heard of them. Dear lord, it looksbadnow but at the time even acknowledging people could be gay, be the focus of a story, and have happy and fulfilling romantic lives was considered a step too subversive for mainstream pop culture
The current generation’s clumsy attempts at broadening minority representation will always become the next generation’s tired and offensive stereotypes.
Hi my dear readers, I would like to thank you sincerely for the kind responses to my stories over the past couple of weeks.✨ Words cannot describe how overjoyed I am. Our enchanting family of lovers of different fandoms is growing and thriving like a meadow in early spring. I never expected so many dear people to enjoy my stories, to be excited and cry over them, and even request a fixed upload scheme.✨ I thank you all from the bottom of my heart and I hope you will enjoy my stories.
I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.
Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.
The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.
Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.
Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.
Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.
By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.
There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.
1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.
2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.
3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.
So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.
by making destiel canon they completely relitigated the lines of curatorial fandom and transformative fandom like BECAUSE fans engaged in a transformative fandom practice that ultimately made its way explicitly into the text from a curatorial perspective the only reading of show supported by the show is that cas was is and always will be in love with dean !! you can only now watch supernatural and have that be the conclusion and ALSO the impetus textually!!
I cannot stress enough that I fundamentally distrust callout posts, and I will distrust you if you send them to me.
Don’t get me wrong: I investigate warnings, and I act on them if they’re true and relevant. But callout posts are, on a very fundamental level, not about what people say they’re about. There are exceptions, but generally speaking they’re made for one or more of the following reasons:
OP didn’t like the subject to begin with (often for bigoted reasons), and they wanted a reason, and a following, to justify and validate that.
OP wanted to gain popularity, so they made themselves look like either a victim, a hero, or both.
OP wanted to claim victim status in a private falling-out in order to preserve good standing with their own friends/their community.
OP didn’t like what the subject was saying, and wanted to silence them (often for bigoted reasons).
OP genuinely just wants “revenge” on the subject, or otherwise wants to ruin their reputation and have them sent harassment.
Again, there are exceptions: there are “callouts” that just unravel a subject’s lies, or point out problems in already public actions. If OP is claiming to have been personally victimized in a legitimately serious way, and especially one that indicates the subject might be a danger to others, I’m definitely more willing to believe it- one obvious example being sexual violence.
But oftentimes, callouts are incredibly personal, misleading, emotionally manipulative, blatantly untrue, or all of the above.
This person came to me on anon; I have absolutely no way of knowing what their motives are or how trustworthy they are. There is no credibility or accountability here.
And I did read the post. Lo and behold, it’s riddled with emotionally manipulative language, false accusations, and the biggest reaches I’ve ever seen:
“DON’T READ THIS CALLOUT, IT’S SO TRIGGERING TO EVERYONE, JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. But the proof is here if you REALLY don’t believe me”
“Proof” is a scarce handful of screenshots taken out of context that contain emotionally evocative language, but do not support the accusations at all.
Some accusations are genuinely just weird logic leaps with no support, others are matters of personal opinion obviously driven by bigoted motives.
OP themselves expresses very publicly that they believe people who are marginalized in the ways the subject are, who speak on that marginalization, should be silenced.
I try to assume good faith here, and I want to believe this anon was just guilt-tripped and manipulated by the post in question. I don’t hold any ill will here.
But anon, I want you to ask yourself:
Are the accusations you’re making something you have personally investigated and found to be true?
Does this person deserve the harassment and ostracization they will likely receive as a result of your accusations?
Will you hold yourself accountable for the damage you’ve caused if you’re wrong?
And if you’re absolutely certain you’re right, come off anon and talk to me as a human being; because I can’t believe you’re ready to be accountable for these accusations if you won’t even put your Tumblr blog behind them.
I’ve had actual, honest-to-god callout blogs reblogging this post like “yeah I research all the claims here!! they’re real and you can trust me (:” as if the entire purpose of their blog is not to encourage their followers not to check those claims themselves, not to think critically about why those claims are made in the first place, & to just rely on random strangers to tell them how to think and who to completely ostracize from potentially vital communities, support systems, and resources.
I cannot emphasize enough that if you spread “callout posts” as a fucking hobby, this post is explicitly about you.
One thing about fandom culture is that it sort of trains you to interact with and analyze media in a very specific way. Not a BAD way, just a SPECIFIC way.
And the kind of media that attracts fandoms lends itself well (normally) to those kinds of analysis. Mainly, you’re supposed to LIKE and AGREE with the main characters. Themes are built around agreeing with the protagonists and condemning the antagonists, and taking the protagonists at their word.
Which is fine if you’re looking at, like, 99% of popular anime and YA fiction and Marvel movies.
But it can completely fall apart with certain kinds of media. If someone who has only ever analyzed media this way is all of a sudden handed Lolita or 1984 or Gatsby, which deal in shitty unreliable narrators; or even books like Beloved or Catcher in the Rye (VERY different books) that have narrators dealing with and reacting to challenging situations- well… that’s how you get some hilariously bad literary analysis.
I dont know what my point here is, really, except…like…I find it very funny when people are like “ugh. I hate Gatsby and Catcher because all the characters are shitty” which like….isnt….the point. Lololol you arent supposed to kin Gatsby.
I would definitely argue that it’s specifically a bad way….a very bad way.
Depending on the piece of media, it could be the intended way to interpret it and thus very effective. When I watch Sailor Moon, I know at the end of the day that Usagi is a hero. She is right, and her choices are good. She and the Sailor Scouts may make mistakes, and those mistakes can have consequences, but by presuming the goodness of the protagonists, I can accurately describe what actions and values the story is presenting as good. (Fighting evil by moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight. Etc etc)
If I sit around and hem and haw about whether or not Usagi is actually the villain because she is destined to reinstate a magical absolute monarchy on Earth in the future, then I’m not interpreting it correctly. I can write a cool fanfic about it, but it wont be a successful analysis of the original work.
But like I said, that doesnt work for all pieces of media, and being able to assess how a piece of media should be analyzed is a skill in itself.
I was an English major. One of our required classes was Theory & Criticism, and I ended up hating it specifically because of the teacher and the way she taught it, but the actual T&C part of it was interesting. And one of the things we learned about was all the different ways of reading/interpreting/criticizing media - not just books, ANY form of media.
Specifically, I remember when we read The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. We had special editions of the book where the first half of it was the novel itself, and the last half was like five or six different critical analyses of the book from different schools of theory. The two I remember specifically were a Marxist interpretation and a feminist interpretation. I remember reading both of those and thinking “wow, these people are really reaching for some of this”, but the more I read into the analysis and the history of those schools of thought, the more I got it. So for my final paper for that class, I wrote an essay that basically had the thesis of “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. If you have trained yourself to view every piece of media through a single specific critical lens - well, you’re going to be only viewing it through that lens, and that means you’re going to read or watch it in such a way that you’re looking for the themes you’ve trained yourself to look for.
My teacher didn’t like that, by the way; she’d wanted each of us to pick one of these schools of thought we’d been learning about and make it “our” school of thought. She wanted us to grab the a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a spanner, and carry that with us for the rest of our lives. She somehow didn’t expect me to pack a toolbox.
My point is: Like OP said, sometimes the tool you need is a hammer. Sometimes you need a screwdriver. Sometimes you can make a hammer work where what you need is a screwdriver, but you’re going to end up stripping the screw; sometimes you can use a screwdriver in place of a hammer, but it’s going to take a lot more effort and brute force and you risk breaking the screwdriver. Sometimes you need a wrench and trying to use a hammer or screwdriver is going to make you declare that the bolt is problematic and should never be used by anyone. Sometimes what you really need is a hand saw, and trying to use any of the others…well, you can, but it’s going to make a mess and you might not be able to salvage the pieces left over.
These skills aren’t being taught in school anymore and you can see it in the way high school aged kids act about media and stuff.
They wouldn’t survive something like Lolita because I swear they’re being taught to turn their brains OFF and be spoon fed all their thoughts by someone else.
It’s really creepy.
I promise these skills are taught in school. I’m an English teacher. In a school. Who teaches them.
Now, Lolita is generally reserved for college classes. But a lot of the rationale behind continuing to teach the “classics” in high school (beyond the belief that a shared literary foundation promotes a better understanding of allusions and references) is that a lot of the classics are built on these kinds of complex readings and unreliable narrators and using historical and cultural context helps in their analysis. (I do think that we should be incorporating more diverse and modern lit into these classes, please understand)
Do all schools or individual teachers do this *well*? No, of course not. Do all students always really apply themselves to the development of deep critical thinking skills when their teacher pulls out A Tale of Two Cities? Also no.
But this isnt a “public school is failing / evil ” problem. Being able to engage in multiple forms and styles of analysis is a really high level skill, and my post was just about how a very common one doesnt always work well with different kinds of stories.
OP, why do you describe analyzing Sailor Moon in a different way than (you assume) the author intended as “hemming and hawing?” I would argue there’s a lot of value in approaching texts at a different angle.
Because ignoring context, tone, and intent when analyzing media is going to lead to conclusions are aren’t consistently supported by the text you are looking at.
“Usagi is a villain because she’s a queen and I think absolute monarchy is bad” ignores the way that Usagi, the moon kingdom, and basically all aspects of the lore are actually framed within the story. None of the characters’ actions or motivations make consistent sense if we start from the assumptions that “Usagi = monarchist=evil” and it would cause you to over look all the themes and interpretations that DO make consistent sense.
At some point you have to take a work at face value and see what it is trying to say.
Is the breakdown of monarchy actually relevant to the themes and messages presented in Sailor Moon? No, not really.
So focusing on the Moon Kingdom monarchy and the ethics there of is sort of… besides the point. The Moon Kingdom is a fairy tale, not a reflection of reality.
I’m not actually interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom, you know?
Now, is it *cool* to look at works in various ways? Sure! Are some people interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom and want to explore what that would look like? Sure! And honestly if you want to explore the ramifications of idyllic fairy tale monarchies on the real world, then that’s really cool too!
But if you are looking at a work to understand what it is trying to say with the text itself, then you need to take some of its premises at face value. Usagi and the Sailor Scouts being the Good Guys is one of those premises.
And really the “Usagi is secretly a princess from the moon” is just a part of the escapist fantasy for most little kids watching more than it has anything to do with actual themes of monarchy.
There is a lot of value in being able to look at a text from various angles. And it’s perfectly okay to use a text and concept as a jumping off point for other explorations.
But the problem comes when people say that Usagi was definitively a villain in Sailor Moon, or that say Steven Universe with themes of family and conflict resolution is excusing genocide by not destroying the Diamonds. It misses the point of the fantasy. It misses the important themes, the lessons and point of the show to look at it like that.
Basically: reinterpretations are cool, but you gotta know how to take a work on its own premises too.
Exactly. Like, magical princess that shows how monarchies (or the idea of princesses in general) is broken or toxic? Utena and Star vs The Forces of Evil are right there.
The idea of a cute talking cat granting girls magical powers to turn them into warriors against evil and getting them killed being evil? Not a good take on Luna, but Kyuubei in Madoka? Exactly this. That’s like, the point of Kyuubei- to riff on the trope that Luna, and Kero, and Mokona represent.
Media can raise all sorts of interesting conversations and discussions and ideas. But there’s a very real difference between trying to awkwardly force those readings on a work where the tone and framing and context don’t support it and acting like the media is actually supporting those messages, and using those ideas to explore it in a different work or to analyze the trope across the genre more broadly.
Moral and pure does not a protagonist make, and fandom is rife with that exclusive interpretation of storytelling. OP makes really good points; this thread is one of the best analyses I’ve read about lit crit on this site lately.
Stories aren’t made in a vacuum– every trope/theme/character archetype comes from somewhere and (general) you do yourself a disservice by viewing everything as whether it’s morally uncorrupted or not.
the whole “fiction doesn’t affect reality” argument is actually kinda racist…
people talk about like how finding nemo and jaws are great examples but nobody ever talks about how fiction has shaped our perceptions of different racial and ethnic groups
like do you think the media has no hand in why alot of ignorant white people think africa is a desertland and not a continent of different countries, full of rich and diverse cultures, beautiful buildings and riches? or why they think asia is only japan, korea and china? when asia is also india, bhutan, the Philippines, nepal, etc?
do you think that media and fiction hasnt allowed whites to view black people as ignorant and lazy thru cartoons and minstrel shows?
like if you really think what youre seeing on tv doesnt affect reality and how people think then like. you must be fuckin stupid.
i know i know water is wet, all these studies to tell you what common sense could. but like … there is very real research out there that shows fiction has a very real harmful impact on minority communities. and that positive representation has a positive effect on these communities.
so no. fiction is never just fiction. and frankly people who think fiction is just fiction can fuck off.
And as creators of fiction we owe it to ourselves and our audience to be aware of these things and to do our very best not to feed that particular beast.
Whoever is using Jaws or Finding Nemo as examples of fiction not influencing people is wrong. Both of those had a huge ecological effect and negatively impacted conservation efforts.
If a fictional shark can put a species on the endangered list just think of what centuries of racist portrayals of people of color has on society.
Fiction is where people learn their first lessons on interacting with other people, other cultures, and new ideas. Fiction can change minds and save lives, but it can also destroy lives.
Never, ever underestimate the power of fiction
Yup. We are the stories we tell ourselves. The good news for writers is that fiction DOES matter. But that good news comes with the responsibility to be thoughtful, ethical, and progressive with the characters and narratives we put forth into the world. Let’s not reinforce the same old shit!
Sidenote: I think the whole “It’s just a story” argument is a weak excuse made by people that want a blank check to write whatever-the-fuck-they-want. Then, when confronted about how they’re perpetuating racist/sexist/etc. bullshit, they come back with “It doesn’t matter.” Ironically, those are usually the same people who freak out when they do an all-female Ghostbusters reboot or something, but whatever…
Reblogging again because I need to pull this up for some TikTok videos about “The Pawn and the Puppet” aka a super ableist and transphobic book written by a popular indie BookTok user.
A lot of trans people, including myself, have called out this book but we keep getting told “it’s just fiction!”
The problem is that this argument exists in two forms on Tumblr.
One form says “fiction affects reality” and what they mean is, representation matters. Accurate portrayals of other cultures matters. Exactly the argument made above. And they’re talking about mass media, Disney and Warner Bros and Paramount and all them, the movies, the TV we all watch. Netflix, HBO. The books we tell our children are important to read, the books we find for ourselves that speak to us. This is an argument for better representation, better research, more roles for a greater variety of people and plots that let different kinds of characters shine.
The other form says “fiction affects reality” and what they mean is, portrayals of bad things will normalize those bad things, even if it’s clear from the portrayal that it’s bad. And they’re talking about fanfic. Fanfic, where if you get an audience of 100 people you’re doing great. This is an argument for censoring fanfic and demanding that no one write pedophilic relationships… or age gaps… or age gaps of 1 year if they’re 17 and 18… or a short cute woman and a tall man because that’s “coded” as pedophilia… you get the idea. And it’s not enough to properly tag those materials to keep them out of the hands of people who take responsibility for curating their own experience, and choose not to read those things. They have to not exist.
It’s a good idea to clarify which argument you’re making, or arguing against, when you’re talking about fiction affecting reality. Because one of those arguments is about pushing back against mass media’s tendency to amplify stereotypes, and the other is about censoring a form of expression that’s created mostly by young women and afab people to express sexual and romantic feelings that women (and anyone society thinks is a woman) are told they should not have.
I do absolutely agree with the points made above. But I have to admit, I’m so much more used to the second argument, at first I didn’t recognize that the posts above are arguing the first argument.
here’s the thing about “fiction affects reality” – the effects of fiction are 1) cumulative, 2) not universal, and 3) not direct.
it’s not “you read one story about a black person who’s a gang member and immediately you assume all black people are gang members.” it’s “90% of black characters you see are gang members and so over time you associate the two with each other because it’s just so common.” it’s “you never see a single bisexual character or hear the word ‘bisexual’ so you don’t even have the vocabulary to describe your own experiences.” it’s “you and a friend read the same story, but come away with two completely different interpretations of it because you are different people with different experiences.”
and finding nemo is actually a great example of something being actively opposite to the intended message of the movie. like, the reason they need to find nemo is because nemo was kidnapped by an evil tropical fish hunter and sold as a pet to live in an aquarium, which is portrayed as a horrific prison that slowly turns you insane and at any time you could be shaken to death by a kid with headgear. and a bunch of people watched it and went “ooh! clownfish as pets! sounds neat!”
when people say “fiction affects reality” in the context of fanfic they don’t like, it’s never articulated like this. it’s “you write one story about a 30-year-old dating a 50-year-old and everyone who reads it will immediately start thinking pedophilia is okay, and also, that was your deliberate intention when you wrote the story, fic writer.”
I think what you’re saying is that if 90% of stories we read/see are about abusive relationships, we’ll start thinking that abusive relationships are normal. And this has happened with the “stalking is romantic” trope! But if we read a few fanfics about incest, it’s not going to change our perception on incest.
If the vast majority of the stories we read/see in MAINSTREAM MEDIA are presenting abusive relationships AS A NORMAL AND GOOD THING, then we MIGHT start as a culture seeing abusive relationships as a normal and good thing. But it’s more complicated even than just that, and that’s not the whole story.
Like… okay if the majority of stories we see in mainstream media present black people as gang members/thugs/single mothers/etc etc etc, it’s a lot more likely for our society to see black people as those things. That said, it’s alsonot “fiction affects reality” on a 1:1 even there, even though we KNOW that’s an issue with our society, because… it’s only an issue because our society already viewed black people that way.
That’s the thing, see. The prevalence of the “normalization” of things in fiction generally depends heavily on what our society already is beginning or willing to consider normal. You’re not going to see pedophilia being normalized in fiction in large part because our society already doesn’t consider it normal and okay. It would have to be getting normalized outside of fiction for a sudden influx of mainstream media promoting it to affect our society. Plus we’d need a sudden influx of mainstream media promoting it
Yes, it can be helpful to have representation of minorities in fiction. Yes, it can be harmful to engage in negative stereotypes and harmful tropes. But it’s not because that fiction is on its own going to change things on a large scale. It’s because fiction affects reality by supporting other things happening elsewhere in society. Fiction can support harmful existing social structures. Fiction can support existing attempts to change harmful social structures. But it’s not going to cause change all on its own. It might spark conversations, it might change individual people, but it won’t be the solepoint of change on a structural level. And that structural change is what’s required for something to be “normalized”.
Fanfiction is never going to normalize fuck all that isn’t already normalized by our society. It’s extremely niche on its own, even if it’s more widely known about, and every trope or topic only ever is going to be consumed by apiece of fandom, which means any topic or trope used withinfanfiction is going to be even more niche than fanfiction in general.
Occasionally people will send me asks wanting to know “what fandom was like in your day” like I’m some old wizened crone of yore at the age of 32. But then at the same time I recall the sound of dial up, the nails on chalkboard screeching, and the absolute frustration when the signal randomly dropped and you had to start all over again. I also remember having to ration my time online to intervals during the day when it would cost less and also so your nan could use the phone to call our Kev and you had to log in as quickly as possible, cover your ears, wait for things to load then click “save link as”, disconnect from the net and then print it out on a shuddering laserjet printer* roughly the size of a small tank so you could read it at your leisure without running up the phone bill, before vacating your much coveted spot on The Family Computer and absconding up the stairs with your print outs like a gremlin to devour the words of a stranger on the internet.
By contrast, I’ve had Ao3 open in one of my tabs for the last three days while youtube plays in the background and I can’t remember the last time I intentionally logged out and let me tell you it makes me feel like a lush wastrel indulging in the height of decadent luxury as I flip back and forth between fics, unable to decide which one I want to focus on. It’s great.
But also yes, fandom has always been this batshit crazy. No, none of the arguments are all that different. Yes we really had to put disclaimers on things or risk being sued by the authors. And yes, I still download my favorite fics because you never know when something will vanish off the internet. I do not however have to print them out anymore, so that’s nice.
some people: write essays on how a ship they don’t like is toxic while hypocritically never examining the same problems in ships they do support. 2000 words of transparent watered-down-wokeness bullshit
me: i don’t like it. 4 words. sometimes adding: i like this other ship more. there, 10 words.
whenever i see discussions about “what is it that sparks fandom engagement??” i feel like they don’t quite land for me in terms of how i interact with media (which matters to no one but me i am aware and this is a flawed diagram for many reasons) BUT nonetheless i find “objective goodness” isn’t a useful metric so this is more how i break it down:
zone 1 is a heavily trafficked zone. perhaps THE most trafficked zone. eyes on the road folks. (your fix-its, your canon-divergence, your what if this then that, AUs, etc. because the story, as it exists, isn’t super satisfying but oh those sweet sweet characters and the lives/worlds that shaped them…)
zone 2 is more like. take a setting, leave a setting. the story was good but the characters were only ok, so byob (bring your own blorbos) and party in the excellent sandbox
zone 3 i’d call the unauthorized sequel zone. great characters, good story, light on the lore/world-building, and thus invites invention or AUs (do evil science here for fun)
zone 4 is highly malleable, content-wise, but absolutely does exist. quantum mechanics or something i dunno i’m not smart
OBVIOUSLY this is reductive (and partly a joke) but at least it does not rely on the idea of ‘objective goodness’ which um. might not be real, sometimes. maybe. difficult to agree upon, anyway
This is not meant to belittle anybody for liking a content creator or a band. Nor is it meant to insinuate you are a bad person, a stupid person, or anything of the like if you were unaware of these reminders. A lot of us are young and stan culture is a recent phenomenona that is only just being understod so these things are simply gentle reminders.
Anyways here are some healthy reminders to…
1. Social Media Break: Take a break from the Internet/Phone/Computer for at least an hour a day! At the very least take a break from social media! Listen to some music, read, exercise, dance, etc. just take a break from constant updates, discourse, and other things present on social media. If you find yourself mentally and emotionally drained or stressed out every time you use social media then that is a big sign you need to limit your social media intake.
2. Content Creators Are Human: Acknowledge that content creators are normal humans like you and I so they can have lives outside of their personas and these lives should be private and respected. The golden rule of dealing with content creators is “treat them like you would a stranger you met at the mall- if you wouldn’t ask a specific question or say a specific thing to a complete stranger at the mall don’t say or ask it to a content creator”!
3. Content Creators Are Allowed To Deviate From You: These content creators are human and as such have their own seperate opinions and feelings and thoughts. Do not expect their every opinion and feeling and thought to match up with yours- as long as they aren’t directly hurting anyone they can have “the wrong opinion” about something and you shouldn’t attack them for that or demand they change their mind. You can offer education- but don’t be rude or dogpile on a content creator just because you disagree on something.
4. People Don’t Have to Like Your Favs: People are allowed to not like a content creator, their actions, or their content. This does not mean they hate you or that they hate everything about the content creator and their content- but they can simply not have a taste for it. They can critique a content creators content or their behavior. Do not attack people for criticizing your favourite content creator or their content. If your fav content creator wants to address criticism or hate they can- but you don’t need to be a white knight for them. Let content creators handle any issues or disputes on their own.
5. Don’t Rely On Them For Your Wellbeing: Please do not put all of your mental health and emotional wellbeing onto a content creator or their work. I understand that you may adore Dream or your fav Kpop Idol but please do not solely rely on then for your serotonin, happiness, drive, motivation, and general wellbeing. That is not healthy. Not for you OR for them. If you feel like you rely too much on a content creator to feel happy or feel good please seek support in other avenues such as through friends, parents, therapy, or hobbies. I understand the pandemic is a tough time but please do not put all of your emotions into the hands of a content creator or a group of them.
Anyway those are my main points! Feel free to reblog this post, crosstag it to whatever fandoms or tags you find applicable, and add on to this list! I love fandoms and all but I want everyone to avoid toxic stan culture that is detrimental to their own health and to content creators as well.
