Rhetoric of Fandom: ONCE

My name is Lindsay, and this is a blog for my university rhetoric class. I'll be focusing on the Once Upon A Time (and ONCE in Wonderland) fandom, and then narrowing my research/blog to be focused on the fans that adore and/or attack Jennifer Morrison in her portrayal of Emma Swan.

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Once Upon A Time: Figures of Refutation

anthypophora: You may ask, "How could the whole fandom look bad based on a few?" But how could they not, when they are so visible? The actors and show runners seem to reply every day to the more virulent fans of SwanQueen on media like Twitter. Not all of those fans act in this manner, but those that provide genuinely kind comments are ignored in order to correct or argue against the Canon storyline. The fandom inevitably looks bad when those that seem "bad" are the only ones seen.

apophasis:  If the subset of SwanQueen shippers continue to act in such a negative manner, it must because they either believe that their actions are justified, or because they simply do not care about the show runners or actors. The idea that their actions are justified is improbable, considering they have faced retaliation from the actors themselves (not to mention other fans). Thus, it must be true that they do not care about the feels or opinions of those writing the show, those that created it, or those that act within the story.

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I felt this reaction gif might be necessary this weekend:

feel free to use whenever :)

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Arsenal FC player profiles by Arsenal Mania - the Arsenal site for Arsenal fans.

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Man United implodes in 5-3 loss to Leicester

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Before I get to the topic of what the author should have looked into, can I just point something out? The first tag on that article. Hilarious (and yet another reason to love the author).

But in all seriousness, I can't say that I was surprised by the similarities that she pointed out. Don't we all love the bad guys in films or books or tv shows? They're the most interesting, almost every time, and they always seem to be classified as "misunderstood," which is the same thing that these girls seem to do with these serial killers that they seem so fond of. It's bizarre, seriously.

To reference the article that was reblogged on the rehtoricoffandom page earlier, I agree to some extent with the idea that race affects those chosen. But wasn't there this guy that everyone freaked out over, too? I mean, he's not the same thing, of course, but still. I think it does happen both ways, though undoubtedly the race that gets the most attention is always Caucasian. When it came to Jeremy (the one linked above), the internet definitely didn't have the same reaction that, say, the Columbiners did -- but that's not to say that they didn't send his face all over through various medias. Clearly they did. But it wasn't the same idea of wanting to be part of that persons life so much as, "oh hey, he's really attractive. Too bad he's arrested and all."

So while I, of course, don't think that it's what most people would call "normal," per se, the fangirling could perhaps be taken as the group coming together to partake in some fictional interaction with equally fictional characters. They clearly build these men up in their minds, but if they had ever met them, who's to say they would have acted the same way? Maybe it's just their playing the killers off as characters in their minds to make it okay or to make sense. Obviously, they're very real and very bad influences, but it wouldn't be all that bizarre if they actually saw the men as those bad guys from TV that they would never have to experience in real life.

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Written by S. L. Price, this source is a print source from Sports Illustrated. Although it focuses on Tim Howard - who is not on the Arsenal team, it shows the fandom for what it is and gives a look at the fans that my other sources have not done. Because it's in Sports Illustrated, we're meant to take the article as a reliable source.

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UEFA Champions League - History – UEFA.com

If I need to talk about Arsenal's participation in the Champions League, this source will give me a bit of history on that league as compared to the Premier League, and the history can be used as an example. Arsenal has never won the Champions League, but has been involved many times over the years (including this season). Like the Arsenal site and the BPL site, the histories were written by employees and thus should be unbiased.

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History

The official history of the BPL is one that I'll need before I can talk about Arsenal's participation within the league. It includes statistics of League winners as well as general information about each season. The information was undoubtedly written by employees of the league, so it can be taken as fact, without any direct biases towards any team (even if Manchester United won practically everything).

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A shortened history of Arsenal as compared to the one on the official website, this source gives an extremely biased view of the team, using words like "heroics" and "made history," as might be expected of a fan site. According to the copyright information, it's run by Rupert Ward. 

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It's just wikipedia, so it could be updated by anyone, but it shows the wide range of supporters for the Gunners, and could be used as an example, similar to Arseblog.

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Written by Chris Stewart, this article was posted through Bleacher Report, which is fairly well known by sports fans - especially football (soccer) fans. In this source, Stewart points out the fickle nature of Arsenal Fans (Gooners, as they call themselves - a play off of the Arsenal members being called Gunners). It's well-known that Gooners are extremely passionate about the team, but they also go match-to-match assuming that the team might break their heart by the end of it, which is part of what Stewart points out. Although the article was written in 2009, it's still true of fans, so I could use it to talk about how "true" fans feel about the ones that only half pay attention or leave when they think they've lost.

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Arsenal’s deficiencies laid bare: five issues in need of attention

Written by David Hytner of The Guardian, this article is a decent source not only because of the fact that The Guardian is a big name in news, but because it is unlikely that Hytner would be writing the article if he was uninterested in the team. While it's critical of both the Manager and the players, Hytner's article promotes improving the team and seeing them do well. I might be able to use this source to show both things like well-known fans of the club (Example in the article being Piers Morgan - though, many others promote the team) as well as average fans such as Andrew Mangen of Arseblog. Morgan and Mangen would be those that know a ton about the sport, as opposed to those that watch because Arsenal did well in the past year. It also mentions high standards of the team members themselves, which might be an interesting look at the upcoming season.

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The blog is written by Andrew Mangan, and published online. It also has an "official" twitter attached to the site and the owner. Mr. Mangan claims a dream of being an Arsenal team member in his youth, and because he is a fan of the team, he is obviously biased towards the team. This source will mostly be used to point out how fans talk about the team and interact, because he gets news from followers of his blog and writes posts with thousands of words each day (if not multiple times a day). The blog supports the team, keeps fans updated on injuries, lineups, and even live-blogs for the games.