I once wrote a post about not being a dick. That's all it was about.
Obsessed with The Untamed and Heaven Official's Blessing, 2ha, and the Washington Capitals. Other fandoms: Check, Please!, Sailor Moon, Supernatural, B:TAS, and other '90s anime. Red Sox, Nats; Stars.I write a lot and liveblog some. Please visit my writing blog, stufftippywrote.tumblr.com.
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Rated: M because it's mostly not smut
Summary: Shane likes watching Ilya Rozanov's goals.
Teaser:
Rozanov’s goals are pretty on TV. There’s no other word for them. The way he weaves through the defense, finds open ice long enough to pick his target, then elevates the puck to the top corner—it’s all just so damn pretty. Such a display of raw skill and power.
Shane has no idea how it happened, but his cock is in his hand.
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Rated: M because it's mostly not smut
Summary: Shane likes watching Ilya Rozanov's goals.
Teaser:
Rozanov’s goals are pretty on TV. There’s no other word for them. The way he weaves through the defense, finds open ice long enough to pick his target, then elevates the puck to the top corner—it’s all just so damn pretty. Such a display of raw skill and power.
Shane has no idea how it happened, but his cock is in his hand.
why is getting the into the shower the hardest thing in the world. and once ur in the shower it’s fine but making the decision to take a shower and actually enacting it feels like you’re sisyphus with that damn rock
Not only is getting into the shower hard as hell but once you're there you are never ever ever coming out of the shower into the cold, hard real world and no one can make you. Just gonna stay here being warm and singing at the top of my lungs thanks, you all go on
good lord, has Bluesky been absolutely insane the past few days or is it me?
If you're trying to drive me back to Tumblr, it's working, lol.
ETA: "US East Intermittent Outage
Since this morning, we have been experiencing intermittent outages in the us-east region due to an issue with an upstream service provider. We are working with them actively to restore service as soon as possible."
Bleh.
It takes a lot to get Lan Wangji’s head out of his book when he’s riding the bus on his way to campus. And this? This is a lot.
He’d been engrossed in a book of poems and had closed his eyes to savor a line when the bus stopped to pick up some more passengers. When he opens his eyes again, a pretty, college-age girl is boarding the bus, sliding her card through the machine at the front. Lan Wangji has seen lots of pretty girls, so this is not remarkable. He is about to put his nose back in his book when she moves aside and the most beautiful boy Lan Wangji’s ever seen enters behind her.
At first, to Lan Wangji, he looks like a bird. A hummingbird, maybe, because he’s humming here and there—saying something to the bus driver that makes her laugh, eyes lighting up when the girl beckons him to an open seat, chatting amiably with her as the bus lurches to life and continues down the road. There’s something almost elfin about his features. Sharp nose, pretty angled eyes, a long sheaf of black hair tied into a high ponytail behind him. It’s not jut his face that reminds Lan Wangji of a bird. He’s slender, small-boned, but still clearly masculine. Lan Wangji would like to hold him in the palm of his hand, stroke his hair like you would stroke a baby bird’s feathers. Watch him sing.
The book falls useless between Lan Wangji’s thighs. Poetry is forgotten. Lan Wangji stares.
As he talks to the girl, this beautiful boy glances around curiously at the bus around him. His eyes are dark, and they dart around as though trying to take in every detail at once. For a terrifying instant, those eyes land on him. But then they are gone again. Lan Wangji is glad. He doesn't want to disturb a bird in the wild.
Then, the boy’s gaze is on him again. And this time it stays, for two endless seconds.
Thankfully, that glance, too, is short-lived, and he returns to looking at and chatting with the girl, who must—must!—be his girlfriend, although they don’t hold each other or lean in the way Lan Wangji has seen lovers do on campus. What girl wouldn’t want to be the girlfriend of this rare bird? Lan Wangji doesn’t know why this irritates him, but it does. He picks up the book where it lies limp and shuffles the pages, trying to find where he left off.
Movement in his peripheral vision. Lan Wangji looks up. The beautiful bird is getting out of his seat, speaking one last word to the girl, and—what?—is heading to the back of the bus where Lan Wangji sits. A flood of panic comes over Lan Wangji, like when he was at that violin recital at age 10 and his violin was hopelessly out of tune. Don’t let him notice me. Don’t let me be perceived.
No such luck. The boy stops right in front of Lan Wangji’s seat and locks eyes with him. “She’s cute, isn’t she?” he says.
He might well be speaking Arabic for all that Lan Wangji understands these words. “What?”
“Mianmian.” The boy hooks a thumb forward, toward his companion. “I saw you looking at her. She’s available, you know. If you like, you can come up and I’ll introduce you. She’s a sweetheart."
The boy thinks he was staring at his friend. This realization dawns on Lan Wangji slowly, a sluggish sunrise. “No, thank you,” he says.
“Okay,” says the boy sunnily. “Thought I’d ask. Have a good one!”
And he turns with a flourish and heads back to his seat.
The bus stops again, Lan Wangji’s jerked forward in his seat. The shock breaks him out of the daze he’d fallen into. The boy talked to him! Lan Wangji got to hear his voice! A lovely, musical tenor. His vowels were resonant and clear. Crisp consonants. He danced through the words as much as spoke them.
Delight soars through Lan Wangji, and then he attempts to remember what he said.
Lan Wangji was caught staring. Which couldn’t be helped because he was staring. Was, and still is, because his eyes have remained fixed, stubbornly, on this boy since the moment he turned his back. Lan Wangji is not used to having such little control over his body. But his eyes keep telling him this boy is a feast, and he must drink him in for as long as he can. After all, once the bus arrives at his stop, or theirs, he will likely never see him again.
Somehow this feels like impending doom.
The boy glances back at him once more in mid-conversation with Mianmian. Who is not the boy’s girlfriend, and that’s a relief. Lan Wangji is not entirely sure why. His brain is racing to catch up to his heart and his fascinated eyes.
Leaning in toward Mianmian, the boy says something that makes her laugh, and then he glances again toward the back of the bus and Lan Wangji. When their eyes meet, he offers a blinding smile. He says one more thing to Mianmian, and then he’s up again, making his way to Lan Wangji’s seat one more time.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to introduce you?” he says sunnily. “You’re staring pretty hard.”
Lan Wangji is, but not at Mianmian. His eyes are full of this wild bird, so close, and his hands itch to reach out and move his hand across the collarbone that juts out from his loose T-shirt, just to see what his skin feels like there.
Oh. He wants to touch. That’s new. Lan Wangji doesn't think he’s ever felt such a strange urge before. His mind is still scrambling to find out what it means.
“You know,” the boy says, “most people would find that creepy.”
Lan Wangji takes in a tense gulp of breath. He had been so enthralled, he hadn’t thought abut what the boy would think of his staring. He forces some words into his throat. “I was not—”
“Oh, I know you’re not,” the boy says. “I can tell. Mianmian thinks so too.” Had Mianmian also turned to look at him? Lan Wangji hadn’t noticed. “It’s really okay if you want to meet her. You look kind of nervous, but she’s good with it. Wei Ying, by the way.” And wonder of wonders, this boy holds out his hand for a handshake.
Lan Wangji’s brain, already running like molasses, shudders to a halt entirely. He gets to touch?
“Lan—” What is his name? Lan Wangji has momentarily forgotten. “Lan Zhan.” His hand slips into Wei Ying’s and this is the most perfect second of his life.
Wei Ying is warm.
Which is to say, he’s real.
This boy who had appeared to Lan Wangji like a bird, like some otherworldly creature, has a warm body and a name. Wei Ying.
Wei Ying’s gaze flutters down to the book in Lan Wangji’s hand. “Are you a student?” he asks. “Mianmian and I are at Gusu. The campus is really nice, but the grading’s strict. I’m surprised they even let me in.”
Lan Wangji’s heart is racing. Now that Wei Ying is a real person, Lan Wangji had better act normal around him. “I, too.” he says. “Gusu.” He could have strung that together a bit more artfully.
Wei Ying leans against the pole to steady himself as he gazes at Lan Wangji. “Oh, really? Sweet. Maybe we’ll see you in classes one of these days.”
If Lan Wangji had Wei Ying in his class, he might never hear a word the professor says. “Perhaps.”
“What are you studying? What is that? Poetry?” Wei Ying leans forward to take a look at the book. “I freaking love poetry. Especially the dirty kind.” He laughs, and Lan Wangji catches his breath at the beautiful sound of it. “Are you a literature major?”
“No,” Lan Wangji says, and his brain is awake now, thank God, even though every half-second his heart skips several beats. “I’m in the music program.”
“Oh, wow!” Wei Ying’s eyes widen. “Wow, I’m so jealous. I’m in social sciences. Mianmian, too. Some of the classes are so awfully boring. But that’s what you’ve gotta do to be a social worker. I’m gonna help people for a living.”
Wei Ying has warm skin, and a name, and a purpose. Lan Wangji has never before had the urge to just reach up and pull a man into his lap before, but it would be so nice if he could.
“Well, I better get back to Mianmian. This bus ride is so long. Why is West Campus housing like in the next town over? Argh. See you, Lan Zhan!”
And then Wei Ying is scampering back to his seat just in time to reclaim it before another patron can take it away.
With his brain fully working again, Lan Wangji takes a moment to summarize what’s happened. Physically, he knows this is attraction. He’s attracted to Wei Ying. It feels, though, like so much more than that. He can’t find a word that encompasses the enormity of how he’s felt ever since Wei Ying got on the bus. He knows it’s not love, because love is something you build and that comes with time, but crush feels like an inadequate word for this much emotion.
He may not have a word for what he feels, but he knows what he wants. He wants to follow Wei Ying off the bus. Into his boring social science classes. Into the quad, where Lan Wangji wants to layer his body over Wei Ying’s and kiss him in the grass. He wants to feel Wei Ying’s weight on him, and sleep beside him, and have him there every day when Lan Wangji wakes up. This boy with whom he’s exchanged maybe a few dozen words. This much wanting is not a crush. Whatever it is, it has completely swallowed him up.
As he watches, still helpless to look away, Wei Ying chats with Mianmian. They both look back toward him quite a bit. And then Mianmian says something, tilting her head, that makes Wei Ying stop and sit there with his mouth hanging open. He looks at Lan Wangji. He looks at Mianmian. The two talk for another minute.
A familiar building catches Lan Wangji’s eye as the bus passes it. Oh no. Lan Wangji’s stop is coming up. Pretty soon he’ll have to take his eyes off Wei Ying and exit, and while he may meet him again on campus, he may not. Ever. It’s too tragic for Lan Wangji to stand. He clenches a fist around his poetry book.
He’s so busy contemplating the sorrow of this moment that he almost misses the fact that Wei Ying is heading back to talk to him again. Wei Ying’s cheeks are slightly rosy, and he’s all the more appealing for it.
“Hey, uh, Lan Zhan,” he says, “Mianmian thinks maybe you weren’t staring at her. You were staring at me.” His cheeks flush all the more. “Is that … is that true?”
Heat rises to Lan Wangji’s own face in answer. Without thinking to, he nods.
Wei Ying just stares at him for a moment, a taste of Lan Wangji’s own medicine, and he deserves it, he’s made this Wei Ying so uncomfortable. He should have had better control of himself. He should never have--
“Give me your hand,” Wei Ying says. And then, when Lan Wangji doesn’t move, he repeats it.
Lan Wangji holds out his hand, not sure what to expect.
Wei Ying grabs him by the wrist, pulls out a ball-point pen, and scrawls a phone number across Lan Wangji’s palm.
“Call me,” he says with a smile.
And he runs to the front of the bus, Mianmian rising and following behind him, as they reach Lan Wangji’s stop.
Lan Wangji is too stunned to move and misses the stop entirely.
That’s okay, though. He can always walk from the next stop. It’s not so far. The only thing he regrets is being unable to follow Wei Ying further. He has his number, though. And he has time.
Wei Ying. A wild bird. And now, Lan Wangji holds the means to catch him, right here, in the palm of his hand.
If you are going to have literally no criteria for being queer, then how can you say that anyone isn't? How can you refer to any person in any context as cis/straight?
If someone tells me they’re queer I believe them. If someone tells me they’re straight I believe them. This isn’t that hard
What problem, exactly, are you so concerned about? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but queerness is still very much marginalized, it’s not as “trendy” as people try to act, and straight people aren’t tripping over themselves to call themselves queer. And if you’re worried about being “tricked” by “infiltrators”, like, you know those people can just say that they’re gay? Like they can lie? They’re not going to try and “sabotage” queer spaces by saying “hey I don’t have any marginalized orientations or identities but I’m still totally queer”, they’d just say “hey I’m super gay, love people of the same gender”
What, concretely, are you worried about happening? What’s the worst thing that could happen due to inclusivity? Because the worst things that can happen due to gatekeeping are very well-known, and I’m much more scared of that
It’s less that it’s trendy and more like, I like having my queer-only spaces. Also queer is a bad word. All our words are bad words. They aren’t oppressed, and for a cishetallo to use a slur as their identity feels a little demeaning to me. Like I dont hate them of course but the A was never for Ally . It’s not queer to be normal
Interacting with them is cool and having them at pride I’m not opposed to but as a person who’s queer it does feel like they’re kinda dressing it up
Im gonna be honest Ive never seen people like that but like, I’m allowed to not like it
What's funny is that this is the exact same argument that transphobic folks use to argue against trans existence being legitimate.
"So you're telling me that some man can just put on a dress and say he's female and walk into a girls' bathroom."
"....Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."
"Then what's to stop lots of men from doing this?"
"The same thing that's stopping them right now. Most dudes do not have this on their list of to-dos."
It's the same for this. You're afraid that people are going to misrepresent themselves as gays and go into the gay bathroom for kicks, when that's generally not something that people do. In fact, you'd probably have to search far and wide to find an instance of someone doing that. You'd have to search much further to find an instance of it actually causing a problem.
Genuinely, what do these dipshits think "fandom etiquette" means? Cause everybody in the tags talking about how evil the concept is, but I thought it just meant "tag to your best abilities, be polite, and don't harrass people"
--
They're talking about being told "Don't like; don't read" when they decided that flaming shippers of their NOTP was activism.
This is just a wild out of the blue take and olderthannetfic may respond with something sarcastic that I might richly deserve, but I promise it's being presented in good faith.
I think one thing that's going on here, aside of the usual batshittery, is that people have stopped considering fandom as something subversive to the system and have started considering it part of the system. To those of us who grew up in the latter part of the previous century, fandom is deeply subversive, because the system that we grew up with -- the one with all the flaws, and with the embedded corruption and discrimination and what not -- was not aware of it, or when they were aware, they dismissed it as weird at best, perverted or disrespectful at worst. The point of fandom was to look at all those power structures and subvert them. Fandom was transgressive, and therefore transgressions within it--reactions against the mainstream, including mainstream ethics-- are part of the cake. They're a feature, not a bug.
These days, when people grow up around fandom, they consider it part of the system. Artists and companies endorse it, encourage it, try to commercialize it. Everyone knows it exists. So it seems part of the whole monolith of racist, sexist, etc., culture, and therefore, "calling out" pieces of it seems like genuine activism. Rage against the machine. But this ignores the fact that fandom itself is, still, its own rage against the machine. It's a bit like going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and getting upset that people are shouting things at the screen because you're trying to enjoy the movie. When directing this kind of "callout culture" self-righteousness is wholly appropriate for the actual system, it turns into downright meanness when it's aimed at transgressive, transformative fandom, which was always supposed to encompass the dark side of how we consume and interpret media.
One wonders if there is a schism in fandom itself between people who consider it "normal" and those who still see it as a refuge for people challenging mainstream culture. Or if there needs to be better terminology to define those two groups.
The way I usually describe this split is that it's about people who see fandom as Content™ and part of their media diet vs. people who see fic writing as a hobby.
Fic certainly is part of many people's media diet and often a very major portion of what they use for entertainment, but ye olde fandom was, on average, more focused on fic as an act of writing. Fic is something you do. AO3 exists to protect authors' right to post, first and foremost.
Someone might enjoy the hat I give them as a gift or like my pics of my sweater, but knitting is still primarily my hobby that's about me doing things with my hands, not a way for other people to get hats or nice pictures. When I write fic, it's a hobby that's about me writing, not you reading even if your appreciation as a reader does provide some extra motivation for me to finish shit and post it, both the actual social interactions and just imagining that a fellow shipper will now have something to read.
As fic has gotten ever better known and easier to find online, more people have started to take it for granted and talk about it from an exclusively reader point of view. Some of them are clueless and self-absorbed. Some of them are doing it intentionally to further an agenda.
This isn't entirely new. When I was in HP fandom years ago and adjacent to some really insanely big BNFs, I witnessed a mountain of "I'm just a little guy" posturing. Twenty-five years ago, some corners of fandom were already plagued by readers treating fic writers like youtube stars who had power over them and owed them things. Some of the BNFs cultivated this crap; most did not. But it took a truly insanely massive fandom to have the glut of fic that made that possible. Those fandoms were very rare in the past. They're much less rare now, and the overall hugeness and searchability of AO3 is extremely visible.
It's not just about fandom being more mainstream. It's also about changing social pressures to monetize every single hobby and moment of time. Insert rant about the gig economy here. There's a bit of an age split simply because the younger generations have less hope and more pressure to ruin their hobbies with MLM-ish thinking.
--
People pulling the "wah, wah, wah, WHITE MEN" shit do not have good intentions.
The biggest factor that lets them get a foot in the door and prevents sensible people from instantly blocking everyone who starts in on this is that AO3 succeeded.
In 2007, the norm was for m/m fans to be treated as second class citizens all over the internet.
In 2026, the norm is for m/m fans to be treated as second class citizens all over the internet aside from AO3 and sometimes Tumblr.
It is possible to exist in a bubble where AO3 looks like big brother in a way that was simply not the case twenty years ago. WWOMB and other multifandom slash archives existed and were certainly pro-m/m, but they were relatively small, not central hubs like FFN. LJ was a welcome respite from the unending "Why can't men just be friends" and worse, but we all know how that turned out. And even then, it was common for a LJ com for such-and-such a fandom to be slash-only or het-only or something. There was a huge split even if slash was starting to win out more and more.
AO3 is the infrastructure of fanfic fandom today and it puts the equality of m/m front and center in the site design itself.
Unfortunately, that also artificially inflates the popularity of m/m on AO3 allowing stupid people who are emotionally 5 to rail against m/m and pretend they're railing against The Man while ignoring what posting on their fandom's main subreddit is like.
--
I do think AO3-style fandom does bear some blame (aside from the popularity of AO3 itself) for the stupid attitudes.
Meta of days of yore vastly inflated the amount we actually elevate walk-on characters and overstated how genuinely transformative fic tends to be. It's a useful legal argument, but most fic is actually a lot like canon plus some extra kissing and/or punching.
Meta and acafandom coming from the Western side of things also didn't bother to know or care about Asian fandoms for years while also being largely silent on minority characters in US media while also going on and on and on about how extremely accepting and revolutionary and feminist and special fandom was.
I do think women writing erotica at all is still revolutionary even in 2026, but if we can recalibrate our claims to be more reflective of actual fandom, I think it will leave less room for bad actors to sound reasonable. We've basically taken everything that's potentially offputting about middle class white US feminism and added "ew, weebs". So when someone is like "How come you aren't elevating the black characters?" people are left scrambling and come up with incoherent or even blatantly racist explanations. ("Rico just didn't seem like he supported Sonny." HE WHAT NOW?)
The actual answer is that we rarely elevate anyone, and we need to let go of the self-important belief that we do. We just make main characters kiss who didn't in canon, and the number of black leads is small and the number who didn't get shafted by canon is smaller. [Cf. my many rants about filmmaking visual language vs. the script and how some characters "should" be awesome but people subconsciously know they aren't and thus don't get fandomy about them.] The other answer is that people are expecting fandoms to look like HP when they usually look like two years of yuletide fics and then silence.
Fandom is special, but it's special in a far narrower sense than some of the ridiculous paeans we've written over the years, and being able to be honest about that would also help us push back against people weaponizing Bad Archive Stats to pretend that hating their NOTP is activism.
--
Fandom does often let people from homophobic environments discover a Queer As Norm type of art that they can access even if they don't have a credit card and can't access mainstream entertainment from such-and-such a country.
That's great.
It was great in the 90s. It remains great now.
Fandom is also pretty willing to latch onto a variety of countries' media and a variety of ethnicities of character, but only if that media is readily available, in certain genres, and neither too good nor too bad, and only if the characters are central ones whose internal emotional life is presented as important by canon. So Thailand can add SE Asia to East Asia in the pantheon of oft-ficced media sources by coming out with some BL series that are decently acted and have okay budgets, but an Afrofuturist film three people saw at a film festival is probably not going to revolutionize AO3 fic stats.
Fandom likes all genders of characters and of ships, but m/m tends to be more popular than f/f in AFAB-heavy spaces, while f/f tends to be more popular than m/m in AMAB-heavy spaces, and we are too misogynist, too misandrist, and absolutely too transphobic about every flavor of transness to handle any kind of reasonable conversation about any of that.
--
Essentially, there are parts of mainstream culture we never challenged and we still don't. I think that's okay. But pretending we were and are revolutionary on all axes makes it easier to attack us.
We were too up our own butts about our specialness, succeeded too hard at AO3, and are too scared of being called unprogressive to be able to push back against bad actors who treat fic as Content™ and think Susie Q Fic Writer and That Network Head with the Insensitive Tweets are exactly the same.
Oh man, OTNF, I knew you'd have a great food-for-thought answer to this. Sorry I missed it to reblog it sooner.
You make a ton of great points on this, but I wanted to go on a bit of a tangent (it really is a tangent, no need to reply) here specifically about your point about BNFs and elevating people within the fandom to celebrity status, because that really is pernicious.
I fell straight into the cross-hairs of that about a decade and a half ago, while I was super immature and super amazed about this new thing called fandom I'd discovered. The fact that I was not immediately welcomed in with just as many comments on my fic as on the fic writers who'd been there for years became a statement on my self-worth, and I made lots and lots of mistakes. I add my personal experience here because I think it's important to say that it's a very very easy path to go down, and the move from LJ to AO3 has made it worse because there's so much less discussion, and fewer genuine friendships which can spawn that discussion. Instead, you see the people with 100,000 kudos and assume they're of some other species.
And if you're me, and I understand many of the people now are not like this, but some of 'em are -- you start to rank yourself on the totem pole and dream about climbing higher. When that should never, ever be the aim. And failing the ability to climb higher, you start to see whom you can take down.
Somehow we ought to have a tutorial level where we take incoming fandom newbies and teach them that the number of kudos and comments and followers REALLY DON'T MATTER. I have no idea how to implement such a level, beyond talking about it on tumblr but gee, I wish we could.
The way the internet has commoditized fanfic, and made it an attention economy, was probably inevitable but that doesn't mean it's any good for us. I still get sensitive when a piece of mine doesn't get engagement, but good lord, I keep it to myself and sooner or later the thought goes away.
All this is really tangential to the original point about "callout culture" or whatnot in fandom, but I think it's related. Hope you don't mind my gumming up the thread with my own thoughts.
Genuinely, what do these dipshits think "fandom etiquette" means? Cause everybody in the tags talking about how evil the concept is, but I thought it just meant "tag to your best abilities, be polite, and don't harrass people"
--
They're talking about being told "Don't like; don't read" when they decided that flaming shippers of their NOTP was activism.
This is just a wild out of the blue take and olderthannetfic may respond with something sarcastic that I might richly deserve, but I promise it's being presented in good faith.
I think one thing that's going on here, aside of the usual batshittery, is that people have stopped considering fandom as something subversive to the system and have started considering it part of the system. To those of us who grew up in the latter part of the previous century, fandom is deeply subversive, because the system that we grew up with -- the one with all the flaws, and with the embedded corruption and discrimination and what not -- was not aware of it, or when they were aware, they dismissed it as weird at best, perverted or disrespectful at worst. The point of fandom was to look at all those power structures and subvert them. Fandom was transgressive, and therefore transgressions within it--reactions against the mainstream, including mainstream ethics-- are part of the cake. They're a feature, not a bug.
These days, when people grow up around fandom, they consider it part of the system. Artists and companies endorse it, encourage it, try to commercialize it. Everyone knows it exists. So it seems part of the whole monolith of racist, sexist, etc., culture, and therefore, "calling out" pieces of it seems like genuine activism. Rage against the machine. But this ignores the fact that fandom itself is, still, its own rage against the machine. It's a bit like going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and getting upset that people are shouting things at the screen because you're trying to enjoy the movie. When directing this kind of "callout culture" self-righteousness is wholly appropriate for the actual system, it turns into downright meanness when it's aimed at transgressive, transformative fandom, which was always supposed to encompass the dark side of how we consume and interpret media.
One wonders if there is a schism in fandom itself between people who consider it "normal" and those who still see it as a refuge for people challenging mainstream culture. Or if there needs to be better terminology to define those two groups.
I'd assume that a lot of the people reblogging and agreeing with this have probably met bad actors who also shut down discussions of how the original media is racist/sexist etc. with a "this discussion is against fandom etiquette, you're not allowed to be critical on main" sort of thing.
I saw a different post going round about this type of thing where someone had written along the lines of "I'm so glad people are criticising the 'don't talk about racism in fandom, that's not fandom etiquette, fandom is supposed to be fun' point-of-view. We need to talk about how people like me often can never customise a character to look like ourselves. How even if I can change my skin colour, my parents or grandparents will still be white. I shouldn't be getting shut down for being upset that my favourite game doesn't allow me to choose my natural hair as a hairstyle option".
And sure, no-one is obliged to engage critically with their fandom media of choice. But it seems to me there's also a conflation of "Fandom etiquette means don't criticise fanworks" with "Fandom etiquette means don't criticise any media I enjoy", and lots of people are railing against the second one? There seem to be two different arguments going on here at least, but just all using the same words, and that misuse of words is muddying the waters.
I agree that there's two different arguments happening here, because what you're talking about is not criticism of racism in fandom, but criticism of the media that fandom is based on. If you're playing a game and you make a character who's Black but their relatives in the game are white, that's genuinely a system problem. That is racism in the system. It is not racism in fandom.
Just because a work has a fandom does not mean the work is the fandom.
THE MEDIA IS THE SYSTEM.
THE FANDOM BASED ON THE MEDIA IS NOT.
There should always be criticism of the original media, that's absolutely fair game and is often the subject of fandom discussion. Absolutely 100% agree with you.
But when the criticism turns to fanworks - and again, fanworks are not the system, they are not media, they are transgressive and transformative OF that media -- then you are doing the thing where you tell the people at Rocky Horror to shut up so you can enjoy the movie. When you say "this fanfic author is racist for writing an interracial relationship when there's another Black character you could pair the main character with." (This has happened to me.) When you say "This person should rewrite their fic because they wrote an asexual character with no sex drive, and that's a stereotype." (This has also happened to me). You are missing the point that these works are responding to the system. They're imagining possibilities outside the scope of what the system allows. Each one of them adds a layer to the multifaceted cake that is reinterpreting and reimagining the source material. No single fanwork has the responsibility of being the whole cake.
Genuinely, what do these dipshits think "fandom etiquette" means? Cause everybody in the tags talking about how evil the concept is, but I thought it just meant "tag to your best abilities, be polite, and don't harrass people"
--
They're talking about being told "Don't like; don't read" when they decided that flaming shippers of their NOTP was activism.
This is just a wild out of the blue take and olderthannetfic may respond with something sarcastic that I might richly deserve, but I promise it's being presented in good faith.
I think one thing that's going on here, aside of the usual batshittery, is that people have stopped considering fandom as something subversive to the system and have started considering it part of the system. To those of us who grew up in the latter part of the previous century, fandom is deeply subversive, because the system that we grew up with -- the one with all the flaws, and with the embedded corruption and discrimination and what not -- was not aware of it, or when they were aware, they dismissed it as weird at best, perverted or disrespectful at worst. The point of fandom was to look at all those power structures and subvert them. Fandom was transgressive, and therefore transgressions within it--reactions against the mainstream, including mainstream ethics-- are part of the cake. They're a feature, not a bug.
These days, when people grow up around fandom, they consider it part of the system. Artists and companies endorse it, encourage it, try to commercialize it. Everyone knows it exists. So it seems part of the whole monolith of racist, sexist, etc., culture, and therefore, "calling out" pieces of it seems like genuine activism. Rage against the machine. But this ignores the fact that fandom itself is, still, its own rage against the machine. It's a bit like going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and getting upset that people are shouting things at the screen because you're trying to enjoy the movie. When directing this kind of "callout culture" self-righteousness is wholly appropriate for the actual system, it turns into downright meanness when it's aimed at transgressive, transformative fandom, which was always supposed to encompass the dark side of how we consume and interpret media.
One wonders if there is a schism in fandom itself between people who consider it "normal" and those who still see it as a refuge for people challenging mainstream culture. Or if there needs to be better terminology to define those two groups.
Facebook post: Hudson is Canadian, but Connor is from Texas …
My brain: aren’t they both from Texas?
Me: …
My brain: oh, sorry, that’s Jared and Jensen. Got my hot duos messed up.
Scott/Kip or Hollanov: kisses under the city lights at night
greater than the sum of its parts
(THE LONG GAME spoilers)
Shane is giddy, walking out of the commissioner's office. Giddy and terrified too, but also strangely solid. Once upon a time he would have frozen, or worse, broke down. He would never have been able to say the things he did in that room. But if he's learned anything from this whole ordeal of hiding, of being outed, of coming into his own, it's this: he can be bent, but he will not break.
And Ilya is beside him like a hearthfire, like the source of light and heat that he's been for Shane since the beginning. Shane drinks from that source greedily, has for years, and when he looks into Ilya's eyes and sees the flush on his cheeks, Shane knows he's just the same. They build each other up, draw strength from each other. Somehow the two of them together make something even greater than each of them added up. The whole greater than the sum of its parts. He used to get frustrated when his parents used that phrase. It made no sense. You can't add two things together and get something bigger than it's supposed to be, that' just basic math, he used to complain.
Now he gets it. He gets it.
They have dinner in town, toast each other, drink enough for a slight buzz but not too much. As the sun goes down on the city, red light reflecting off panes of glass on skyscrapers, they walk hand in hand through the park. The world is muted around them, as though they are separated from everything by the glass of a snow globe. Music floats by, a saxophonist in the park somewhere. Chatter of children out too late. Shane has the strange sensation that he's dipped into the future, where walking hand in hand in the park is something they've done for years, not something wonderfully, drastically new.
"You okay?" Ilya says, cocking his head.
"Mm." And, because he knows now that Ilya needs checking in on too: "You?"
"Mm."
At the edge of the park, where the lights of the city glitter around them, Ilya kisses him, slow and sure. Shane's eyes close, and he tastes and feels that old familiarity in this new setting: out in the world, in front of who knows who. Unafraid. Proud, even. And joyful, a strange new kind of joy, one that makes Shane smile into the kiss. When he opens his eyes, the city lights twirl and sparkle around him like dancers.
"You think this is funny?" Ilya ribs him, biting his own lip to keep from smiling just as wide.
"A little. A little funny," Shane answers.
"Fuck you," Ilya says. He allows himself to smile back.
The city lights dim and blur behind Shane's tears.
