Whenever the drama in fandom happens it is always involving the same urls, the same people like it's the one specific (and toxic) part of the fandom that is the problem. It's unfair to put the blame on all fans that like the character. It's not personally directed at you but whenever these people start some shit there is also a lot of "that's why the fans/the character suck" comments going around.
That’s very true, anon. And we as fans need to understand (if we don’t already) that every fandom has its bad apples and that the actions of a few hateful X fans do not represent the majority of X’s fanbase. Thankfully this particular bunch of rotten fruit is very small, relatively speaking. They’re vocal—and mean, rude, nasty, and just generally unpleasant—which makes them seem bigger than what they actually are, but compared to the fandom as a whole, they occupy just a tiny fraction of cyberspace.
Like the good-for-nothing neighbors at the end of your street whose yard is a burning half-acre of garbage, all we can do is put up stockade fences and close the door in their faces whenever they come knocking with their belligerent, unsolicited complaints about our gardens. (How dare we grow marigolds instead of roses! It’s hypocritical to plant petunias beside daffodils! Fertilizer is an abuser! It’s luturully impossible to be a fan of all three varieties of thunder lilies, the first two lilies are obviously superior to the third! Et cetera et cetera ad nauseum... while the soil of their own yards is too toxic to grow anything.)
Most of us know their URLs; we’ve seen them spewing their poisonous vitriol here and there on Tumblr—some of us have even dealt with them personally—and we’ve blocked them, as we should. This is just fandom in 2020. We’ve got to take the bad with the good… or block the bad so we can enjoy the good.
For the most part, these bad fandom neighbors stay cloistered in their little echo chamber, thriving off of each other’s hatred like a pack of cannibalistic parasites because the only people who have the capacity to put up with their buffoonery are themselves. Vomiting their misguided rhetoric out in broad daylight (i.e., other people’s posts and blogs, like what happened here recently) allows the rest of the fandom to see how awful they are.
But hey, apparently this is how some people do fandom these days. One might think that if being in X or Y fandom caused someone so much personal agony—and unbridled rage directed toward living human beings, over works of fiction—the individual(s) in question might move on to something that does spark joy in their hearts.
▪️ For more about how hatedoms and antis operate in fandom, read this post.
But once again we must remember that this group represents only a small, fanatical portion of the fandom and we should not let it ruin our enjoyment of characters, actors, directors, or the films they are a part of.
I can admire Tom Hiddleston without belittling the other actors he works with. I can be critical of the Thor films without ripping them apart, calling the directors childish names, and actively trying to recruit others to hate the films as much as I do. I can love Loki without being a part of that hateful cult that twists him into an unrecognizable idol to justify their tearing-down of other characters.
No one is going to take away my enjoyment of this franchise or its characters, period. I am here to have fun, make fics and gifs and art, and share them with people who also love them. I will not be coerced into abandoning something I enjoy, none of us should, and I certainly won’t be shamed or made to feel ashamed. The haters and antis certainly aren’t, so why should we?
This is my fandom, too. And their problem with canon is not my problem.
