As you guys know, I’m usually pretty chill when it comes to fandom and, like, the Internet in general, because ultimately it’s all for enjoyment and I genuinely don’t care about The Discourse once I’ve blocked all the people that bother me, but today has been… a lot in many aspects, up to and including fandom, so I’m gonna talk. Mainly about Shadowhunters, its fanbase, and Cassandra Clare. If you don’t feel like dealing with this, scroll on. You won’t really be missing out.
Now, on to the Hard To Swallow Pills.
1. The entire fandom isn’t terrible - neither the show or the books one - but stop turning a blind eye to the part of it that’s a fucking nightmare. I’m not saying to talk about them or attract attention to them; don’t do that. It’s what they want. What I’m saying is, it’s ridiculous to talk about how it’s impossible for a Shadowhunters fan to vandalise someone’s car (which there’s actual literal proof of), or to harass people or to drive them off the Internet. It’s ridiculous to talk about how loving and supportive the entire fanbase is.
A lot of people in it are that way, of course. That is true and they’re the ones we should be paying attention to! But denying that there’s a loud, vapid, absolutely vile minority that tries their hardest to ruin people’s lives on the daily is silly. They exist. We all know that. ‘A true fan would never-” But they do. They’ve done it for the past two years and they’re doing it now. No-platform them and move the hell on, but let’s not pretend they don’t exist when it’s been right in front of our eyes the entire time.
2. People who create the fictional worlds you entertain yourself with don’t owe you shit. Like it or not, none of us is entitled to anything. We don’t ‘deserve’ and we’re not ‘owed’ anything. It’s entertainment and it’s given to us for us to enjoy. That’s all. We don’t own it, we don’t control it and we sure as hell can’t tell all the writers and producers and actors and everyone else involved in them that they should be grateful for ~everything we’ve done~ and do more of whatever you want to see.
Cassandra Clare created those characters. The writers of the TV show adapted them in their own ways. None of those people owe you anything and claiming that they do is entitled as all hell, especially when you disrespect the person who created the thing you claim to love so much.
“But she’s got bad history! She didn’t treat her characters well! She-”
I don’t give a fuck! She might have done all that she’s accused of, she might have done none of it and neither of those options have any impact on the person you choose to be! If you criticise her - or Todd Slavkin, or Ed Decter, or any other human on the planet - for what they’ve done, be better than that! Learn from their mistakes! Be the person who would never do the same thing, especially over make believe things! Which leads us to…
3. No fictional character will ever be more important than a living, breathing person. Ever. Yes, even if it’s your favourite character; the one that’s really really important to you. Yes, even if the living, breathing person is someone you dislike or someone you dislike a lot. No, not even that one character and that one person. Not ever.
So when that person you dislike a lot says on social media, ‘hey, I’ve had a terrible month, my dad was diagnosed with cancer and I wish people would stop telling me to kill myself every time I write a two-sentence post’, you fucking stop doing that. You had no right to do it to begin with, but at this point? This is the point where you shut up. It truly is. It doesn’t matter how spiteful you feel or how miffed you are about your favourite form of entertainment being taken away. That’s an actual person with actual feelings and they’ll literally always matter more than the fictional feelings of fictional characters. There’s nothing controversial about this statement and in the same line of thought…
4. Your real actions have real consequences. Here’s a reality check if you needed it - your life is not a TV show. Neither are the lives of the people you communicate (if we can call it that) with on the Internet. These are actual humans. So when someone’s car gets vandalised, when someone ends up doxxed, when someone’s food ends up filled with needles over fan art - that’s all real.
And if you’ve ever sent anyone any sort of abuse over the Internet - even to the extent of ‘I hope you choke’ - then please sit down and think long and hard about people you know offline. Your friends, relatives, coworkers, classmates, neighbours, people you see on the subway. People you can see as someone substantial, not a profile picture on the Internet. People just as real as the ones you treat like shit over fictional characters. Think long and hard whether you want to be responsible over someone actually getting hurt, actually waking up to constant threats and hate sent their way over the most innocuous posts every damn morning, actually losing their life. It’s happened before; we all know it. People have been hurt IRL because of fandom. Is this the kind of responsibility you want? Do you ever want to feel like you’ve contributed to that when you think of the person on the other side of the screen as more than just some annoying might-as-well-be-bot who you argue with over who they ship on a TV show or what kind of headcanon they have, things that ultimately absolutely do not matter and do not affect you in any way once you stop interacting with the person?
If the answer is no, then it’s probably (definitely) time to stop and look around you and realise how ridiculous this actually is and that you can do better. The only logical next step is to try and enjoy whatever you love with the people who also love it and push everything else to the side where it can’t have the power to bother you.
If the answer is yes, then you’re probably (definitely) in dire need of psychological intervention and also to be kept away from the general public, because your mindset is extremely dangerous to literally everyone outside of your carefully picked group of people who care about the same things that you care about in strictly the exact same way. It’s not a mindset that has a place in a fanbase, in the offline world. or in any sort of healthy community. It’s a mindset that needs to disappear because yet again - this is real, actual abuse that you are throwing at people for the sake of fiction that, for what it’s worth, doesn’t even belong to you to begin with.
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