#fandom issues

[odd--soul]

okay guys say it with me:

a character being nonverbal does not mean they are childish.

a character being nonverbal does not mean they are naive.

a character being nonverbal does not mean they are "minor-coded".

and a character being nonverbal ESPECIALLY doesn't mean they cant think for themselves

[sorin-sunchild]

At this point it feels like a goddamn social experiment. One that proved itself true within a goddamn day.

Hypothesis: People will look past POC, especially Black people and any women in media to fixate on the white men especially if they're skinny.

Method: People watch the Backrooms film and then post about it on Tumblr, openly showing which characters they decided to fixate on. This is then observed by everyone else to decide which characters are the most popular.

Result: "Hey Tumblr, here's a film where the two main characters are a woman and a Black man - they're fully fleshed out, complex, have real personalities and have the most screen time which one is your fav-ah I see, you've fixated on the skinny white boy stoner who died quickly in the first half and the white guy who appeared a little bit through it and mostly at the end who also has little personality. No no don't worry I don't think you're racist and sexist this eye rolling is completely unrelated."

[tongue-tearer]

"every miku is canon!" mfs when they see a black miku (suddenly its not canon anymore)

[awwwsome413]

80% of this fandom for some reason

[renthony]

In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

_

Like this essay? Tip me on Ko-Fi, pledge to my Patreon, or commission an essay on the topic of your choice!

[monsterblogging]

Whether or not a ship is canon or endgame is irrelevant. Shipping is about exploring things you're interested in. That's it. That's literally all there is to it.

[fae-of-the-wind333]

We need to talk about fandom's inability to accept endings

Listen, sometimes it's warranted (I'm looking at you, Supernatural 👀).

But more often than not, I find myself in a fandom that flips out about the ending of a show, despite the fact that the ending was genuinely well thought out and objectively effective in tying up the story.

It has happened to me multiple times that I finish a show and nod, thinking, "Yeah, this was a nice way to wrap it up." Then I go on TikTok or, especially guilty, Instagram, and what do I see? People in a frenzy, cyber-storming and harassing the creators, making mean-spirited rants about how the ending was trash and awful, and how dare they do this... And I'm just sitting there, like... huh?

And I think we desperately need to talk about this, but I don't have a long-format YouTube channel to analyze things, so Tumblr it is.

So far, I have identified 3 key issues fans have that cause this phenomenon, and unsurprisingly, the main theme is a lack of media literacy. But just shrugging it off with that is not enough for me, so here they are, with examples of two fandoms where I have seen this fallout live time:

Writers have no reason or obligation to canonize your headcanons - example: Stranger Things.

Y'all, it was EXHAUSTING being in the ST fandom when part 2 of S5 dropped. People were MAD mad, and after swifting through the hate comments, it seemed most people were mad about one thing: Byler. (Now, I want to put a disclaimer, bc people do have a piss poor reading comprehension on this site: this is not to say every criticism for ST s5 was unwarranted. There were legit issues with the narrative, there were some plotholes and the show overall struggled with its overload of characters, so obviously, some side characters didn't have space to get a proper end. And Netflix's insistence on more CGI def didn't help. But the overload of hate the Duffer brothers got was not justified.)

Truly, I have no idea what reality Byler fans lived in that made them so delulu... And I'm saying this as a fellow shipper who is a sucker for friends to lovers. But Byler was not canon the way the fans wanted, and was never going to be. Since s1, this love triangle of Will being in love with Mike and Mike being with El was set up, and it was very clear they were going to carry it out. It's not "queerbait" if the show never promised an ending where Mike was with Will. I don't deny it's a cute ship. But your ship doesn't have to be canon for you to enjoy it. Stonathan and Ronancy aren't canon, I still like them, so what. This insistence that a ship is somehow superior or only valid if it's canon is genuinely harmful to fandom culture as a whole.

But the main point here is: just bc a theory or ship is popular in the fandom, that doesn't mean the creators of canon have an obligation to make it true. The creators are entitled to write the story they want to write. I understand feeling upset if the reason for something not becoming canon is homophobia (again, looking at you, Supernatural), but ST is not a homophobic show. It simply made a gay love story that was not reciprocated. Which is incredibly important representation btw. (Hands up all the gays who had a crush in school/as a teen that went nowhere 🙋‍♀️ bc I can relate.) Just bc it's not the expected ending, that doesn't mean it's a bad ending.

(Y'all, I genuinely fear for what will happen in the Wednesday fandom once the show ends, bc I have a feeling it will go down the same path of nothing is good enough...)

2. The writers don't owe you happiness - example: Good Omens

This is also kind of true for ST, but I wanted to bring up another example where it's even more accurate. So a few days ago, the GO finale came out on Prime, and the reactions to it have been so conflicting it's nuts. Some fans agree that it was a great ending (me included), while others have been outraged and spamming comments, demanding that the studio release the "original script". Now, fair to say, GO 3 was noticeably rushed, and the 100-minute runtime was much too small for what the story required. But that isn't the fault of the story or the production; that is on Neil Gaiman and his nasty ass for not being able to be a decent person. His scandal jeopardized the entire project of s3, and for a long time, it seemed like there wasn't going to be anything done. It's a miracle in itself that we got this movie to begin with. And it was possible bc the rest of the writers and crew cared so much about these characters, and wanted to give them a proper end. Which they did. Despite all the impossible challenges, they pulled together an ending that was incredibly bittersweet and perfectly in character.

Then what is the issue, you might ask? The 'bitter' part of bittersweet. It seems like people now can't emotionally handle a story that doesn't end with every duck lined up perfectly. Honestly, people wanted a fix-it fic... while forgetting that many fix-its handwave away certain emotional hiccups in order to deliver that yummy fluff. Which is something you can't do in canon.

(SPOILER FOR GO 3)

The main "issue" is that it wasn't Crowley and Aziraphale that got together (tho I'd argue they died with the full knowledge they loved each other and that is sometimes enough); but their human reincarnations, Anthony and Asa. The most repeated complaint is "but they're not the same characters I loved :((", which completely misses the point that they are still the same soul, but born as humans instead. They got everything they could've wanted: a universe where humans are free, to be human, and to be able to live together without any strings pulling them away. I feel like ppl don't realize that there was no way demon Crowley and angel Azi could've been together. Truth is, with divine knowledge, they would always feel a sense of responsibility for humans. Even if Heaven and Hell disappeared, and they just kept on going, but without power, all their baggage would pull them down. Instead, they got to experience true freedom, and found each other not bc it was ineffable, but bc their love was so strong, it remembered even when their minds didn't. Honestly, if a person knows anything about reincarnation, karma, and the true way our souls travel from body to body, they immediately understand the ending. And I do. But spiritual messaging aside, GO fans often forget Crowley and Azi were never a proper couple. S2 clearly shows that during those 6000 years, Crowley was completely unaware they were in-love. You can actually see the exact moment during his conversation with Nina when he realizes. Meanwhile Azi always kind of knew how strongly he felt about Crowley, but he denied it even to himself. He was an angel, and he prided himself on being a proper angel at that. Sure, he wasn't, but he believed himself to be. His entire worldview and self-identity were based on the concept that Heaven is good, Hell is bad, Earth is neutral, and therefore angels are good, demons are bad, and humans are both. His love and devotion to Crowley was a threat to everything he believed in, everything he stood for, the very order of the universe. I mean, ffs, it took the destruction of the entire universe for him to be able to admit his feelings! And Aziraphale could not let the two exist together. But at the same time, he also could not let Crowley go; in fact, you can see him get more and more dependent on Crowley as time moved forward. So he just kept this limbo alive, which was ultimately destructive to both of them. And Crowley went along with it, not even fully comprehending why, he just felt the love and connection, that underlying feeling that Aziraphale is the only person who can even remotely love or understand him in this cold, dark world. So he let himself be used and bossed around, while also being incapable of reflecting on his feelings or finding a solution, just wanting to run away from the conflict. If you think about it, they were kind of toxic for each other, and in this context, with their baggage, they would always be toxic. It was only after they were freed from the context that warped them into this 'with-you-without-you' limbo that they could actually be each other's partners with no damage.

(SPOILER OVER)

3. Your fear of pain is not the fault of the writers - it's the fault of fascism

This is where the issue really lies. People have been conditioned not to accept negative feelings as natural or necessary. From schools censoring the hard parts of history to not upset the kids, to social media censoring words like fuck, kill, rape, or genocide to keep things "user-friendly"... Our environment is constantly pushing the notion that discomfort is unacceptable and you should never feel sad. When really, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger are more than natural, they are inherent parts of humanity. But in the current climate, it's all about performing happiness, neatness, and perfection. From the botox-craze, to the aestheticization of everything, all the way to the dumbing down of media. Where if a show makes you sad, then it must be written badly, if a comment makes you angry, it must be from a stupid person, anyone who makes a mistake is evil, and anything that's upsetting or inconvenient must be broken and thrown away immediately. This is happening, this is the underlying issue. This societal push.

Because it's actually perfectly valid to feel sad that a show you've invested so much time and love into has ended. It's fair to feel a sense of grief that manifests as anger or sadness. And it's especially natural to feel sadness over a bittersweet ending, bc bittersweet is supposed to be sad. What isn't valid is that, instead of processing these feelings, people throw everything back at the creators, pretending they did a bad job. When in fact, art is supposed to make you feel intense emotions, this is the whole purpose of its existence. But people nowadays expect conflict-free escapism and refuse to engage critically with the media they consume (and no, typing out "this was shit and I hope you die" is not critical engagement).