darkangel0410

[darkangel0410]

I just saw someone say AO3 is “gay teens writing gay shit” and I have no idea how to tell you that most of the writers you love so much are adults.

#the fandoms change but the people don't

[darkangel0410]

What's the worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years, and what's the worst thing about fandom that's always been true of it?

The worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years has been the incentivizing of fandom-as-conflict: not merely as a field in broader culture wars but as the field for endless intra-group battles.

This manifests in many ways: as seven hour videos complaining about The Last Jedi, as Twitter backlash campaigns, but also as stans defending their faves from any and all criticism real or imagined, as the endless boom-and-backlash cycle to any fandom meme or joke you see on Reddit, and as the drive for people to look for evidence other people discussing a thing they like are hysterical illiterate dolts, before anything else.

Or, in other words: a lot of fandoms are full of assholes these days, whose main interaction with fandom is using it as a reason to be an asshole, and to defend being an asshole. The actual “fandom” part of fandom no longer really exists for them. The discourse more or less is their fandom; someone whose main fandom activity is sharing videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) isn’t in the Steven Universe fandom, they’re in the videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) fandom. I mean, the chief fandom for many people is their side in the fandom war. What type of fanfic you write is secondary to what your affiliations are vis-a-vis battles over fanfiction

(One trend I've noticed is people who aren't at the stage where they only talk about what they hate and not what they love, but are at the stage where they can only talk about what they love in relation to what they hate. "I love this movie...and it proves this other movie is bullshit made by a hack". No ability to say just "I love this movie", period, end of sentence. This is how like two-thirds of Film Twitter talks about film, the remainder are all the grindhouse people going "man you've GOT to see Wrong Turn 5")

Another one, that I think is related, is that fandom’s become...more transitory, maybe? There’s Big Fandoms that are inescapable and then everything else feels like it’s here for a weekend and then it’s gone. And we’ve always had fandoms that endure and fandoms that vanish quickly, when the show runs short or turns out to be bad/boring, but we did use to have a lot of enduring if small fandoms for Okay shows most people hadn’t heard of and now you don’t really. Or they burn themselves out fast.

So we’ve reached this stage where fandoms are either so big they have seven hour long discourse videos, or they’re a smattering of fanart over the course of two weeks last August. But that isn’t really the fault of fans so much as modern media release schedules.

A lot of fandom activities of old are just...impossible now, with many shows? The slow build of speculation and fan works and in-jokes and theorizing and analysis simply can’t exist in a world where the premiere comes out the same day as the finale, and you can’t talk about the finale because you have no way of knowing if the person you’re talking to binged it all in one weekend or is still on episode four. That was the kind of thing that sustained the fandom of something that wasn’t a big hit, or even something that was. My fave fandom experience ever was watching the online Lost fandom wildly theorizing for all six years of Lost, and we’d never get “and what if the Smoke Monster is a dinosaur but only the head?” under a Netflix release model. Now at a base level, we either have shows nobody can discuss because nobody’s sure who’s seen or what, or shows where everyone just discusses the finale right away, and where you get One Week of Show and then a massive hiatus, which either kills all momentum or...drives fandom in the direction of hyper-analyzing everything and fighting because, well, what else is there to do? And that plus the outrage cycles of social media plus the fact that “man who yells at Star Wars” is now a viable career choice result in, well. *gestures upwards* All that

(Really, shout out to Cartoon Network for engineering the Steven Universe fandom to Be Like That through their inscrutable strategy of dropping episodes during one random week every five months or whatever)

As for something that's always been with it...cliques and a certain fannish elitism, like, that sees engaging with media in a fandom sense as more creative or analytical or intelligent than your average person. You see it now in the form of, like, people holding up fanfic above published fiction as more representative or authentic (I’ve seen more than one post on here strongly implying queer rep doesn’t exist in mainstream non-fic storytelling???), or going “well, we think about shows, unlike those normies watching sports”. But that was probably way more pronounced a thing in the past, in the 40-50s sci-fi fans were calling non-fans "mundanes" and calling themselves "slans" as an in-group signifier (a reference to a book with superintelligent psychic mutants known as slans). Like at the very least we should be happy no one’s calling non-fans “muggles” anymore. In the evolution from “mundane” to “muggle” to “normie” normie’s probably the least bad one

#the fandoms change but the people don't

[darkangel0410]

Turning this post into a poll because why not. You can still send me asks about the titles if you want!

#i totally voted for the god fic kit 🤣🤣🤣 #but i want to vote a secodn time for cam/jamie in case there's another second cam/jamie orgy fic in the works #that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

all-american bitch - olivia rodrigo // jack eichel

#love this op #that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

@candy-belle

New goalie lore dropped:

Videocredit: mikagoalielife on TikTok

#that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

anonymous reviewer: i don’t like the way you’ve written this character in this fic

me:

#the fandoms change but the people don't #for real tho

[darkangel0410]

"how can you like this objectively bad thing!" because i have bad taste. move on.

#every hockey fan on tumblr #that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

Yes!!! Lots of other cool stuff that (some) people will dig when it's done!

luca and adam god fic? 👀

Oh yeah this is a more recent endeavor! Co-writing with @darkangel0410 so I won’t give too much away but… Adam is a god that kid Luca semi accidentally creates from his own rib? And ya know. Other stuff

#it's mostly my fault more of isn't done tbh #i'm having a shit time irl rn and it's spilling over onto my writing #but as soon as i can write again #you bet your ass i'll be working on this one #that's hockey baby #god verse

[darkangel0410]

Curious about something

#definitely over 10 #i think i have 10 eichel jerseys alone lol #that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

[darkangel0410]

👀👀 not gonna name names but SOME of u are sweet and kind and deserve the world and i am rooting for u

#you know who you are ♥️♥️♥️♥️ #not hockey

[darkangel0410]

this is a rlly silly poll that probably nobody will see but I am curious:

#i don't wear socks at all so #not hockey

[darkangel0410]

cutting child porn from ao3 is not going to be a ‘slippery slope’ to full blown ‘censorship’, you guys are just pedophiles

#the fandoms change but the people don't

[darkangel0410]

@hckyrcl

I think my heart knew you were mine long before I ever realized it.

k.b. // a court of frost and starlight - feyra to rhysand (by sarah j. maas)

#oh #god verse luca #that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

biting someone's muzzle is a love language

#love as violence #werewolf!luca verse #that's hockey baby

[darkangel0410]

#akskskksjd #not hockey

[darkangel0410]

🔹 Saying that it's okay to write or read about dark and taboo topics but only when they're portrayed in a certain way is still censorship.

🔹 Wanting to ban or forbid media that you believe portrays a negative topic in a positive light, by glorifying, romanticizing, or fetishizing it is still censorship.

🔹 There is no objective metric to decide if a story is portraying a negative topic the 'right' way.

🔹 Just because a piece of fiction doesn't explicitly condemn or portray an evil action in a bad light in the text doesn't mean the author thinks its good or is trying to persuade the audience that it is good.

🔹 Survivors of trauma will not always write fiction about their trauma in a way that seems 'right' or 'normal' to you.

🔹 Banning fiction because it portrays dark, taboo topics in a way you consider gross or disgusting is still censorship.