Fandom is just a never-ending trial of attempting to come up with story ideas to torment your friends but accidentally tormenting yourself in the process.
There’s something really fascinating about watching fanon happen.
Like I’ve always seen it, but here I’m actively seeking out all the fic from the day the movie dropped, about the actual main characters for once, so this is kind of the first time I’m seeing fannish tropes develop in real time.
NGL, it’s cooler than I expected. And not just because most of it fits with what I was hoping for.
My Black Widow movie google alert is basically a microcosm of my fannish experience, where I assume I know very little and thus want to be educated, but it turns out that most people know even less than I do and are publishing articles that sound authoritative but are really designed to convince even more people their particular shade of bullshit is the gospel truth.
I guess there's some wank about wanting Spirk to be canon in the current Trek shows and all I can do is shake my head and chuckle sadly as I say "oh, babygirl, never gonna happen."
We had (fleeting) non-mirrorverse core bridge crew queer rep in one live action Trek via Sulu in Star Trek Beyond (thank you, Simon Pegg and John Cho) and they haven't made a movie since.
The thing Star Trek fans have to accept is that Star Trek, as a media property, is a sublime disappointment.
For all its hopeful roots in Lucille Ball's funding the show, in Rodenberry's real (for the time) progressivism, for all of MLK telling Nichelle Nichols to stay and Leonard Nimoy's advocacy for her-- for all the positive portrayal of black fatherhood in Sisko, the self-discovery and self-acceptance by so many including B'Elanna Torres, Worf, Data, Bashir, Odo, for all the girl-power storylines for Kira, Janeway, Beverly Crusher, and more, like the neurodivergent representation in Spock, Data, Wesley, and Seven of Nine, the healthy masculinity of doting fathers (Tuvok and Sisko) interracial families on screen with Miles & Keiko, the themes of overcoming hostility and self-hate to the "model minority" in Bashir, Una Chin Riley, and La'an-- for all of that sublimity, there are as many or more disappointments.
Star Trek is pro-choice, anti-war, pro-children, nuanced about "alien" and "enemy" and "less advanced" cultures, and dares to hope we all can be better. It is also imperialist and sexist and heterocentric, for starters.
(There's also so goddamned much of it that many avowed Trekkies haven't watched every show-- I know I haven't described the full scope of the wonderful and the bullshit.)
There is the behind the scenes sexism, homophobia, and racism by writers and showrunners (ptooey Rick Berman). The salary issues with Nichelle Nichols, Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar you early lesbian coded legend you deserved better), and Jeri Ryan. The increasing sexualization and sidelining of Deanna Troi, much less Seven of Nine. The whipsaw characterization and increasing centering of Beverly Crusher as Jean Luc's love interest rather than as the ship's doctor. The persistent orientalism. The way they did Dax in her/their on screen incarnations so dirty for frank and fluid sexuality. (Guys, so many fridged female love interests since the beginning. Captain Kirk is just Little Joe in space.)
Star Trek (the media product) does not and cannot live up to Star Trek (the Idea). Modern fandom exists because just like Star Wars, Star Trek would be so good if it was good, but it's not.
It is often excellent, often ridiculous in a fun way, not infrequently misses the mark badly and earnestly, and far too often tokenizes, baits, and sidelines its characters, actors, and writers. You are not the first fans to lobby the show to do better. You won't be the last to be ignored by showrunners and the owner company.
Star Trek the show will never fully be Star Trek the idea, and if you can't accept the contradictions and cherish the sublime bits without letting the disappointments sour you altogether, then you've missed a main point of Star Trek-- we all make mistakes and have to accept our contradictions and the compromises that kept us alive, but still try, on the whole, to do better.
Also, Star Trek series, like life, rarely start full steam ahead with mature ideas and steady, even production. Were you polished and consistent when you were 12? Watching Star Trek is like growing up-- you have to cultivate patience with the way growth is earnestness, sweetness, and good intentions yet chock full of full of awkwardness, failures, mistakes, stridency, and rage at structural and societal injustices.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. Celebrate the good, and let fandom salve your wounds from the bad.
I get asks every few weeks or so asking me to recommend a fic/art or comment on a fic/art or share a fic/art. Occasionally these asks are polite. Often, these asks are entitled or accusatory.
Frequently, these askers assume something about me and my "status" in fandom, which: sweetheart, babydoll, absolute asshole baby shithead: stop chasing clout, stop assuming people have clout, stop assuming people want clout. I write for free about imaginary space wizards and scientifically impossible clones living in a sociopolitical-economic shit-show in a spwestern spopera that's all a narrative analogue for/critique of corporate and western facism and American warmongering. There is no clout.
Do a Star War because you like something about the Star War and want to explore and share your thoughts on that particular thing in the Star War. Any other reason is (imho) invalid.
Less frequently, some askers assume I am a real person with a real life, and they've paid attention for more than ten minutes to the fact that people, generally, have stuff going on outside of tumblr.
Those polite asks are fine, and the remainder of this post is not for them. Assuming I have time, I will often go look at the thing and seriously consider whether it's my jam and whether to comment/queue it. Did you ask politely? Thanks very much, I appreciate you a lot, seriously. Kindly ignore the sarcasm/bile that follows and understand that the most likely answer is "I missed it because I didn't have time."
As to the rest of the asks demanding I share/read a particular piece of fic/art, you may choose the "no" answer that aligns the most with your unfounded grievance du jour:
I didn't/won't share the work because:
I am 40 or 50 years old with a full time job and stuff to do IRL
I blocked/muted the user bc their tumblr/ AO3 tags subj. annoyed me/obj. sucked
Not my ship/current preoccupation or narrative/otherwise kink
Hand-waving the Tusken Massacre is not fine, actually
He would not fucking say that, actually, but I know how to use the back button
Racist to Mace Windu or other brown/non-human character
Fundamentally missed the whole point of canon and slandered Jedi
If you used Gen AI to "create" I hope you get food poisoning forever
Do fandom however you want, but I do fandom w/people who comment/reblog/share
Negged themselves/others in tags-- bruh, just post the thing and calm down
I saw what you fuckers did to real "BNFs," go fuck a cactus
People are allowed to not jive with things that are objectively excellent art
Voting ended onMay 15, 2025
This is not a real poll, obviously, but the sentiments are true, all the same.
People are allowed to not jive with things that are objectively excellent art. People are allowed to not be interested in the same things that tickle your particular fancy. People are allowed to take different personal messages and meanings from any given piece of "art," and it's delusional to insist that everyone else has to have the same experience of the work as you do.
Still, though, one thing among all the above reasons is universally true: in canon, Anakin Skywalker is a genocidal fascist baby-murderer as of the Tusken Massacre, and your woobifying fanon apologia/justification for that mass murder is fucking gross, actually.
It’s not that I’m confident the Black Widow movie will be good, it’s that I’m confident that if it isn’t good at least half a dozen or so people will put in a lot of effort to explain how we can forcibly read against the text to MAKE THINGS be good, and honestly, sometimes that’s enough for me.
Probably the biggest change in my approach to media over the last few years is that I’m a lot less interested in my favorite characters’ strengths, and a lot more interested in their flaws.
Unfortunately this leads to a lot of discussions where I’m like “I mean I know she’s amazing but let’s talk about how she fucked up again.”
So I used to read posts about how great characters I don’t care about are and kind of eyebrow raise, which is fine, that’s how fandom works. But now I’m like “Oh, I love her so much, but this is ringing so untrue for me because she is absolutely way too flawed to be capable of this.”
