Things I Wish I Knew Earlier In Fandom
But maybe these will help somebody now.
Most of your fandom experience is shaped by who you follow. Find a good group of people and stick with them.
Support your favs and a lot of them will become your friends, or at least be friendly back to you.
Just unfollow people who bring unwanted content or negativity onto your dash.
Block people who cause you stress. It’s not worth your time to focus on parts of fandom that don’t make you happy.
Blacklisting words/tags is a tool you are allowed to use as much as you need to.
Don’t feel like you have to pretend to like things that make you uncomfortable in order to fit in. Set healthy boundaries for yourself.
Never tag your hate. Never send hate anons to someone.
Content creators love getting comments, seeing people gush in the tags on reblogs, and getting fans in their inbox. It’s the best way to motivate them to keep making awesome stuff.
If there’s certain content you want to see but it doesn’t exist yet, then make it. Draw the thing, write that fic. If you can’t, then comission an artist or writer, or send someone a prompt if they’re open to it. If you can’t do that either, then write meta or headcanons about it. Put it into the world.
Create what you love. Do it for yourself first and foremost, and if even one other person likes it too, then that’s a bonus.
Hope it’s okay if I add something on:
Reblog the things that you love! Tumblr runs on reblogs, not likes. If you love a writer, artist, GIF-maker, cosplayer, or any other creator, reblogging will help their posts circulate and encourage them to create more.
If there is a ship or trope you don’t want to see, you can use the exclude filter on AO3 searches. If you don’t like it, don’t read it, but also don’t complain about it.
Use tags correctly: “/” means relationship of a romantic and/or sexual nature. “&” means friendship or, like, family bonding. If you mix those up, it gets awkward.
Tag spoilers for new media that just comes out. And spell your spoiler tags correctly. (And if you really want to avoid spoilers, avoid Tumblr until you’ve seen, heard, or read the thing.)
Fandom is a party not a marketplace.
Always ask before giving constructive criticism.
