#fandom meta?

[kalicofox]

Okayso. I've been thinking a lot about Dark Dan, and Vlad, and the relationship between the two, and one thing that gets to me is that really, everyone seems to neglect the *Vlad* portion of Dark Dan. Like, yes. He's Danny's ghost half. But he's also Vlad's. And I feel like no one ever really explores Dan fully. Like, yeah, we get it, he's dark Danny. But he's also light Vlad. Not in the sense that he's a good guy or anything, but in the sense that… Plasmius' Obsession is Family, or at least that's how I've always seen it. When the Fentons died, he lost his family. Sure, Danny was there, but Danny was a sad, depressed fourteen year old. Sad, depressed fourteen year olds aren't pillars that you should be leaning on for support when your two best friends, people who've been closer to you than your own parents, die.

Plasmius' Obsession is Family.

Phantom's is Protection.

People, me included, talk about Dan's Obsession like it's just Danny's, but broken, but that's not entirely it. Plasmius' Obsession is there, too, and it ends up neglected a lot.

[quickreaver]

Not to like... perpetuate drama, but...

I feel bad for the mods who seem to be trying their best to be neutral. It does feel like they're doing their best and that they've truly pushed themselves into a corner.

Unfortunately it seems like they just can't get past the fear of pissing off the wrong people and...yeah. It's come around to bite them because some Wincest shippers are just sick of it and won't be silent about it.

As for me...I was super excited to participate! I normally write gen/hurt/comfort but I am a closeted Wincest shipper so maybe if the right prompt had come up I would've written Wincest. But this kind of thing is the exact reason I am a closeted Wincest shipper. I hide because I don't want to be treated as something undesirable and that I should be ashamed.

So whether or not they're "allowing" Wincest submissions to their "dark" blog, I'm out because they made me feel gross.

Anyway I'm glad the inclusive one was created 💙

Oh, nonnie. THIS. I feel you so hard. *shares shameful hugs* I'm out-ISH with my Wincest shipping—which mostly confines itself to art, to be honest, because that's what my id digs, and I srsly do prefer gen and gencest in my reading proclivities—and I, too, was super excited about this event, but then. I agree. The mods got themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. (I talked to a couple of them for a bit, and they were absolutely willing to listen, so kudos to them for that.) For years now, fandom has been forgetting all the wonderful things it's GOOD at: community, creativity, variety, exploring fiction, and having so many excellent ways to filter and tag. Purity culture and virtue signaling has gotten conflated with activism and it's become trendy to ship war in the prescribed way, even tho it winds up being almost entirely misplaced. "Wincesties" (god, I feel like I'm 12 every time I type that out) have been made into bogeymen, and you're not one of the cool SPN kids unless you've got a DNI in your tumblr bio.

But as you age, you live more and experience more and you realize that things aren't as cut and dried and easily compartmentalized as you thought. You're not a bad person for wanting to read or write or create kinky fiction. Any kink. And social media gives EVERYONE a platform, good, bad or otherwise. (I know, I'm preaching to the choir; I'll stop flapping my dentures now.) Thank you for dropping this into my dusty inbox, nonnie. Keep writing/creating. Keep socking it up, if it keeps you safe. And if we continue to choose events that opt for tagging and filters instead of ostracization, we can keep fandom vital and varied. <3 ADDITION: I totally forgot! There WILL be an inclusive witch!Sam event, in response to the kerfuffle!  Please to be clicking here: https://witchsambingo.tumblr.com/ !

[olderthannetfic]

lol. reading mlm in all those links threw me for a minute like wtf??

Haha. Yeah. To be honest, I tend to have it in the opposite direction.

Words cannot express how much I loathe ‘mlm’ and ‘wlw’ as terms for people outside of a medical journal article.

[soleminisanction]

….okay so this isn’t wank-y but it is about the wank and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Does it ever occur to folks that a fair chunk of fandom drama comes from people not recognizing the difference between Doyalist and Watsonian criticism?

For those who don’t know the terms, the Watsonian perspective on any given work is the in-universe justifications and reactions (ie, that Doctor John Watson chose to do X because Y) while the Doyalist is the out-of-universe equivalent (ie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle chose to have X happen because it’s a metaphor for Y). Google the TV Tropes page if you’re interested. The important thing is that it seems to me a lot of fandom drama turns vitriolic in part because people are unknowingly viewing the same issue through different sides of this divide.

Using this recent CR blow up as an example: from my observation, when the moment in question went down, most people who expressed annoyance did so from a Doyalist perspective. The plot point of Keyleth’s grief disrupted the equally important plot point of the marriage reveal, exasperating the recent feeling among Vex fans that her scenes and story arcs are always interrupted, overshadowed by, or shared with her brother and she never seems to get nearly as much to herself.

But when other fans lashed back, they did so from a Watsonian perspective: that Keyleth’s grief and Vax'ildan’s hurt was valid and that expecting her to be okay with everything that’s happened in the last 48 hours was unreasonable. Which then got answered in another Watsonian perspective, which is that whatever she feels it wasn’t fair to take it out on Vex and Percy. Both of which were true, but which instantly got tangled up in the Doyalist criticism about conflicting plot points and unbalanced narrative and mutated into this awful mess where it’s being presented like the characters and the validity of their choices/emotions are in conflict from a Watsonian perspective.

Which they’re not. Not in a strict right v. wrong sense anyway.

It’s nearly 4 am so I have no idea if any of that made sense or not but….it’s something to think about.