hi, did you know that projecting onto characters or changing aspects of their identity to reflect your personal experience is okay?
did you know that if it’s not racist, antisemitic, or furthering other harmful stereotypes, it’s alright to do?
did you know that if you research well and do it with taste, you can make characters other races or religions or sexualities?
did you know that’s valid if the source material has them as identities that are treated as the “norm”? because representation is an issue and making a character a minority race or a LGBT identity can help further positive representation in fandom?
did you know that although this can be done harmfully, and those who use this to hurt other groups or people should be called out and educated, this is not an inherently bad concept?
did you know that one of the ways people interact with media is relate to characters? project onto them? create alternative universes where maybe, just maybe, they aren’t all white and cis and male? because, gasp, that’s not the way most of the world works?
did you know people transform stuff all the time? people ship parts of the same person, people age characters down and up? and although it’s more loaded to make them a different religion or race, when done well and for good reasons, that’s just another aspect of interpretation?
did you know that fandom is, in its very nature, transformative?
and did you know that it’s fine to have issues with doing it yourself, but that doesn’t justify stopping others from doing it?
yes. yes, there are some very harmful headcanons in this fandom. but if I want to make an AU where the characters are nonbinary, because I’m nonbinary, that’s okay. if someone wants to make an AU where characters are jewish, because they’re jewish, that’s okay. if someone wants to (god forbid /s) make an AU where they’re not all white cis men, and they do it with respect, that’s okay.
we don’t have to find another media. we can tag our stuff appropriately so you can avoid it. we can hold ourselves and others accountable for harmful representation and stereotypes.
we can project. we can transform. we can put pieces of ourselves in these characters, and that’s okay.
we will not find another fandom if we don’t want to. this fandom has room for all of us. this fandom has room for interpretations and projection and people who are not white or cis or male, and want to see themselves in media.
we will be respectful, and you can avoid our content if you’re comfortable with that, but we are not going away.
representation in media is slim. we will make our own. and if you are extremely uncomfortable with that, I ask you, sincerely, to think about why that is. it’s valid if it squicks you out. it’s valid if you’d just rather not engage. it’s valid if bad experiences with stereotypes make you wary of the whole thing.
but if the very idea of people projecting onto characters, transforming and interpreting and creating something new, is something you don’t like?
maybe you don’t really understand what fandom means.
