did something happen in the narnia fandom?
*long drawn out sigh* Oh boy anon, where have you been for the last month?
So much has happened that I don’t know where to start tbh. The Narnia fandom has become one of the most toxic fandoms I’ve ever had the experience of being in so far. Like the lack of support for diverse content is just so tiring.
Here’s what I know has happened so far:-I don’t know the whole issue but apparently some fans tried to argue that Lucian (Lucy & Caspian) was an okay ship?? You’d need to ask someone else about this because I didn’t know about this issue until after it was pretty much done.
-There was an issue with some members in the NarniaNetwork because they were supporting/trying to push their racist and anti LGBT+ views over others diverse views so, as a result, those members were removed. I won’t talk more on that issue because as the admin and creator of that network I made the decision to only inform Narnianetwork members if they wanted to know more. It’s not for non-narnianetwork members to hear about because frankly it’s none of your business. I won’t mention any names even though I know some of the individuals have made posts themselves on the issue. I’m only saying this because I’m not going to lie and say Narnianetwork was perfect at that time.
-A couple days later there was a Narnia fan who sent the narniaconfession blog a confession saying “the Narnia fandom need to stop forcing diversity”. Do you have any idea how hard it would be for any non-white and/or LGBT+ narnia fan to hear how our interpretations and head canons are INVALID?? Because, let me tell you, I’m so tired of pandering and trying to keep the white-and/or-straight-only narnia fans happy. When we non-white and/or LGBT+ fans create such edits, we are not doing it for the white and/or straight only community. WE ARE CREATING THIS CONTENT FOR OURSELVES. Also with this confession, I know some people tried to argue that having people focus on LGBT+ head canons of the Pevensies and other characters was wrong because different sexualities/LGBT+ views like that had no place in a children’s series but at the same time those people that argued against having different sexualities in the series were still okay with shipping characters in a heterosexual relationship. The ship in question is Suspian (Susan & Caspian) and, despite me being a Suspian shipper, I still feel like it’s extremely wrong where people only acknowledge them as a possible ship and disregard other sexualities/relationships. Like seriously, do you understand how bad of an ideal that is to spread? That children aren’t able to be any different sexuality than straight. And the other harmful thing about this was that this ideal immediately tries to imply that every LGBT+ head canon is inherently sexual when that is a complete lie. There was just so much wrong to that confession that there was a huge uproar of anger from the diverse Narnia fans for a good reason.
-I know that another Narnia fan posted their OWN head canons and interpretations about the characters. And because they weren’t what the straight and/or white fans wanted, SOME ABSOLUTE DISGUSTING JERK decided to send that fan in question RACIAL SLURS in their ask box anonymously. Like what the fuck?? This person has to live with the knowledge, for the rest of their life, that they did this disgusting thing.
-I know that there’s Casmund (Caspian & Edmund) shipping discourse but I don’t really know what’s going on for that so you’d probably be better off asking someone else.
-And the latest issue that has risen up in the Narnia fandom is that the fandom don’t really appreciate the amount of time and effort creators put into their content. Instead these content creators get bashed on in the tags because the person who reblogs the content doesn’t like what they see, conveniently ignoring the whole “just ignore the post/block it if you don’t like it’ ideology in favour of saying how the creator of said content is clearly wrong and the reblog-ee is right. The other problem for content creators is the clear unevenness in the ratio of likes vs. reblogs. I.e. when a person makes an edit and gets 50 notes on their edit, the ratio looks something like “43 likes, 7 reblogs”. This is a huge problem for content creators not just in the Narnia fandom!! It’s happening in every fandom and the issue is some of these creators may depend on followers to get their content out past just circle the creator has.
-Also, I know another Narnia fan who was prominent because of their creations left the fandom as well because of the toxicity of the fandom.
To end this off I’m going to say this once: I have not and will not be revealing names even if you come off anon and ask me directly. I’ve been very firm on this stance even amongst the NarniaNetwork discourse when it was occurring and I will remain firm on this stance for other discussions that had nothing to do with the NarniaNetwork.
This got really long but that’s what I know has happened/is currently happening in the fandom. I obviously don’t know everything that’s occurred on those topics, like I’ve said, so in those cases where I don’t know what’s going on you should definitely ask someone else who does because I don’t want to be giving you the wrong information on those topics.
TLDR: the Narnia fandom is an extremely toxic fandom to be in currently specifically if you are a POC and/or a member of the LGBT+ community. This fandom has isolated and/or driven away a lot of POC and LGBT+ members because of the lack of support for their diverse interpretations of the series.