#fandom discourse

[daisysmalia]

The urge to gatekeep Lou from 9-1-1 twitter is so strong. They won’t stop misinterpreting his words to push their own theories. They only started being nice to him when he said stuff about their ship, and it’s pretty clear he’s only saying that stuff because otherwise they’ll go back to hating/he’s responding to paid cameos. In literally the same stuff they think he’s saying Tommy is the stepping stone, he’s also literally trying to get them to put their ship aside and enjoy BuckTommy. Like how is this being missed lmao? His answer about buddie was the same as Oliver’s. That they don’t know. No one knows at this point.

#lou ferrigno jr #fandom discourse #sorry I’m just pissed off and in a mood today #and feeling petty #NO ONE KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN #NOT EVEN TIM YET #and like it’s clear in interviews rn oliver is trying do dissuade a bit against buddie #like yeah he’s saying he’s open to it but then everyone is convieniently ignoring what he says right after and it’s happened in two now! #Leah rambles #BuckTommy

[captain-hen]

i'm sorry but this fandom acting like everything they didn't personally like about s5/s6 was kristen being Out To Get Them because she just really hated the fans or was homophobic or whatever—nevermind the fact that we got more screentime for henren than ever before, including a begins episode under her. please get a life and learn how to be normal about women lol.

#and they're STILL blaming her for shit they don't like about s7 although tim is unquestionably in charge! #just say you hate women and don't ever want to blame a man and go #neethu speaks #fandom discourse

[themotherofhorses]

Hi guys, it's Vic! Also known as:

Round TWO at addressing the extreme racism in the CoD fandom!

So it’s both odd and funny that my Indigenous fem!OC has pissed off so many random people, especially with the fact that I created her to ship with Ghost.

(A fictional character that has NO canon love interest, FYI. Sorry to bust y'all's little bubble. Well, there's Mara and Urban Tracker....)

Anyways, I really don't care if this post sounds bitchy in nature. I really don't, not anymore. Some of y'all need a damn wakeup call. Several months ago, in December of 2023, I made a post (here) regarding the sudden influx of hate I began receiving following the posting of my OC, SilentDove Reyes. For around two weeks after that post, the hate died down, and I felt motivated to create more content involving Dove and Ghost.

Until the hate picked up again with every little thing I posted that related to my OC x Ghost.

However....this new hate incorporated the MMIW. A bold ass move, in my opinion.

If you are not aware, the MMIW stands for "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women." Alternate spellings include the MMIWG & MMIWGTS (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits). As of 2023, statistics indicate that Indigenous women face a 10x murder rate than any other race/ethnicity. I have made a previous post regarding the issue, seen here. The unfortunate truth is that young Indigenous girls are more likely to be SA'd and murdered than to attend college. Let that sink in for a moment.

Now, I am an Indigenous woman. That is no surprise there; I fashioned my OC to provide myself (and, by extension, others) with Native representation in a franchise I greatly enjoy. What IS surprising, however, is that me doing so has pissed off so many people. I'm very certain some of y'all must descend from Andrew Jackson, or John Wayne cause, christ on a bike driven by a pike.

Here is a screenshot of a hate anon I recently received:

Listen, I don't care who you ship Ghost with. I really don't. I've blocked numerous shipping tags, remained mindful of the content I'm interacting with, and surrounded myself with fellow mutuals who also have personal OCs. It is really that easy.

What I do care about is the fact that some of you CANNOT separate fanon headcanons from canon material.

Exhibit A:

So let’s clear some stuff up!

Soap x Ghost is NOT canon.

Ghost being queer is NOT canon.

And, most definitely, Ghost being a woman abuser who would harm/abuse/murder a woman (either physically, emotionally, psychologically) is NOT canon.

What IS canon is his and Soap's strong bond. In my eyes, that is a brotherly bond, reminding me of a big brother/little brother relationship; in my fanfiction, Soap is Ghost's children's uncle. In fact, his son (second-born child) is named after him.

You are, of course, free to view them as romantic; what you are not free to do is attack OC creators/non-shippers for not perceiving them like that.

That is just fucking weird and delusional behavior. Knock it off. You're giving your fellow normal shippers a bad name.

ALSO! Let’s clear things up!

1. I’m not straight — I’m bisexual and demisexual.

2. I’m only half white (Spanish, with Mexican heritage). I’m QUITE LITERALLY an enrolled Native, so I guess the best way to describe me is “biracial.”

3. It’s y’all ruining the canon gay representation by shipping Laswell—a GAY woman—with Price, despite the fact that she canonically has a wife.

4. My OC does not have a “dumb fucking name.” Her name is an Indigenous name with a specific backstory to it; it’ll be explored further in future fanfics once I find the motivation to return to writing.

Anyways, I highly doubt this will be the last post I create regarding this problem; apparently, a nice chunk of the fandom has this intense animosity towards fem!OCs, fem!Y/Ns, and BIPOC!OC creators. Alright. With that being said, I invite anyone who has similar experiences to share yours, either in the reblogs or in separate posts.

As sometimes we say during pow wows:

“The floor is all yours.”

Thank you!

#vic talks #fandom psa #fandom discourse #call of duty #call of duty modern warfare #cod fandom #call of duty fanfiction #cod mw #cod mw2 #cod mw3 #cod simon ghost riley #cod simon riley #simon ghost riley #simon riley #cod ghost #ghost #cod oc #call of duty oc #orginal character

[writer-in-theory]

Due to new information come to light this weekend, I will be stepping down as a mod for the Billy Hargrove Big Bang. I was asked to help with it by this person after I worked on the Harringrove Big Bang with some of my close friends, and I have to admit I had no idea that so much harm was done to others by this person. It is never my intention to allow so much hurt on my watch, and I don’t want to continue working with anyone who has knowingly done as such.

All I can say, is I am so sorry to anyone who was hurt by this person. I feel blindsided by them too, I’m sorry.

#fandom wank #fandom discourse

[phantasm-masquerade]

reblog for a bigger sample size if you feel like it

#hibiki//discourse #fandom culture #canon vs fanon #fanonization #polls #i love polls #fandom discourse #fandom bs

[webshood]

not gonna elaborate it rn, but people diminishing Jason's experience with homelessness, malnourishment, childhood abuse and neglect, because he got adopted by a billionaire while also hcning Tim Drake to be abused and starved by his wealthy parents is rooted in racism and classism

#jason todd #dc comics #red hood #batfam #tim drake #don't even get me started on the latino jason/asian tim agenda #fandom discourse

[braxiatel]

I think the best solution to the “Grian fans making everything about Grian” complaint isn’t to shame the Grian fans but rather that the rest of us who have other faves should simply become more abnormal about them

#/lh /I know it’s complex #hermitcraft #secret life #hermitblr #trafficblr #fandom discourse #not badly but just in case #the void collection

[kimkhimhant]

to reiterate: an autistic fan headcanoning a character they like and relate to as being autistic is not armchair diagnosing anyone and is not harming anyone. it is not an insult for a character to be headcanoned as autistic, it is not the fan claiming their experience as being the only autistic experience, it is not claiming that there cannot be other interpretations.

an autistic person seeing a character's traits as similar to their own and finding comfort in that is not an insult to that character or to other fans.

an autistic fan headcanoning their favorite character as autistic is not a personal attack against you and your experiences and preferences

it feels incredibly ableist and dismissive to tell autistic fans that headcanoning a character as autistic is Problematic. Autism is not an insult.

#people having character headcanons that are different from yours is not an attack against you or your headcanons #benji talks #kinnporsche #kpts #kim theerapanyakul #fandom discourse #i'm sorry for continuing to post about this but it is seriously harmful #kimchay

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

personally, I think people are allowed to ship a “toxic ship” as long as it’s fictional and they can separate fiction from reality. shipping a fictional “problematic ship” doesn’t mean you’re “abuse apologist” in real life. the same way people who enjoy fictional villains are not “murderers” in real life.

it’s okay if you think this ship makes you uncomfortable and so you personally dislike it. what you can and should do is avoid their contents and refrain from interacting with people who do ship them. that mute and block buttons are your friends.

what you shouldn’t do, though, is harass people who ship them and brag about how they’re “red flags irl” and how you’re “morally superior” simply because of fictional characters.

I promise you, minding your own business and not caring about what ship strangers on the internet ship will make your fandom so much less toxic and a whole lot more enjoyable.

#fandom #fandoms #fandom police #blorbo #ship war #shipping discourse #fandom discourse #comfort character #hannigram #harringrove #sylki #hannibal #mileven #hannibal x will #ship and let ship #ao3 #archive of our own #loki #angst #whump #tropes #trope

[xx-slug-xx]

Ao3 authors, please learn to not insult people and be “morally superior” in the tags

Instead of tagging “noncon is gross” or “not noncon because that’s problematic”, for example, just put “enthusiastic consent” or “consensual sex” in the tags. It makes things a whole lot easier for people to filter and know what’s going on.

I really don’t care that you think noncon fics are bad or whatever, I (and many others) will be more likely to read your fic about two boys who are deeply in love if you aren’t an ass about your morals in fiction :/

#ao3 #proship #profic #anti anti #profiction #comship #proshipping #proshipper #anti censorship #fandom discourse #anti harassment

[imakatperson22]

Them: Wait, so, you think Tommy’s closet joke was actually hysterical and made you love his character even more instead of hating him?

Me:

#911 on abc #911 season 7 #911 spoilers #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 abc #911 #911 show #911 fox #911 s7 #911 7x05 #buck x tommy #bucktommy #evan buck buckely #bi buck #tommy kinard #firefly #anti tommy kinard #I will not stand for Tommy hate #fandom discourse #test me #it was a great joke #it definitely wasn’t enough to out him #please get a grip #some of your anti Tommy posts read like satire #it’s really silly

[captain-hen]

For me it's also the fact that they've been on 2 dates (one that went terribly) and barely know eachother, but suddenly they're endgame material, perfect for eachother, and Tommy needs to be protected from heartbreak. They're not even in a relationship? Fandoms treatment of the women in Buck's life in comparison is glaring

yeah. and look, i don't want to dismiss the fact that a lot of the initial response to this arc came from a very emotional place, which i absolutely get. but i honestly expected people to act a little more balanced about it once the initial high of 7x04 faded, and they just...didn't? it legitimately feels like everyone collectively lost their minds (not in a good way), and to be honest, the way queerness is being discusssed—the blanket accusations of biphobia/homophobia that are being slung around (ironically, by people who are falling into biphobic stereotypes while talking about buck rn) at anyone who is critical of the way it's been executed—it's frankly made this fandom a very uncomfortable place to be in rn.

#neethu answers #anon #fandom discourse

[theggning]

Wtf is this "sibling-coded" nonsense I keep seeing? Y'all know that if a man and a woman are close but you don't personally ship it, they can just be friends, right? Even really really good friends? They can love each other? But also be not romantically linked, and also not be "sibling-coded?"

Like there's a whole spectrum in between "fucking" and "siblings." Friends? Partners? Has the word "platonic" lost all meaning?

I mean I personally don't think it's very platonic to get four inches away from each others' lips and touch intimately and make BDSM jokes, but that's also EXTREMELY NOT "sibling-coded."

#i am not going to tag a fandom here because i've seen it in several of mine but #y'all what the hell is going on here #are you okay?? is everything okay?? #does anyone who says this actually have siblings?? #fandom discourse

[salemoleander]

I am growing increasingly tired of the way certain sections of the MCYT fandom treats QPRs and non-romantic relationships as if they're inherently within Creator Boundaries. This is both ignorant of what QPRs are, and willfully avoids considering boundaries as anything beyond a useful checklist to bludgeon other fans with.

QPRs can look like friendships, friends with benefits, kink relationships, life partners, and a million other things. They can appear identical to romantic relationships from the outside. They can include sex. It's frustrating seeing QPRs morphed into Schrodinger's Platonic Relationship in fandom, where people write what is functionally just traditional romantic ship fic but still get to yell at other people for Breaking Creator Boundaries.

It feels like the assumption is "Romance might upset creators, but as long as it's platonic it's fine." As if a QPR fic where characters spend the whole time cuddling, or even a fic where they're assigned as family and are written to have a non-existent sibling relationship, wouldn't also be deeply weird & off-putting to creators. (I know many people don't approach creating fan content with creators in mind, but for those who evidently do it seems deeply odd to pretend that romance is taboo but cuddling/whump/etc are inherently unobjectionable.)

A fic where someone gets Overcome By Instincts and kidnaps another character to (platonically!!1!1!) force them to cuddle is way weirder than just having them kiss. Which is fine! It's fine to be weird! The problem is assuming that an ABO fic w/ the serial numbers filed off is inherently More Pure and palatable to creators just because it uses an & instead of a /, and in incorrectly redefining an entire complex relationship category to 'sexless off-brand romance that won't get me cancelled on Twitter'.

#uhhhh not sure what to tag #fandom discourse #mcyt #this isn't so much swinging at a hornet's nest as pulling it into the car next to me and shutting the door #but gd I cannot take the total ignorance of QPRs and hypocritical 'But Boundariessss!' from people writing a neutered version of 50 shades #happy to add more tags for blocking purposes! #salem tag

[animentality]

#twitter #sheith #voltron #fandom discourse #fandom #ao3 #proship #antis

[sassydefendorflower]

I want to talk about something. I want to talk about ableism in fandom. And sexism in fandom. Oh, and racism in fandom.

Mostly though, I wanna talk about how the discussion about these things often gets derailed because people don't understand what trends and typical behaviors actually are.

Whenever a Person of Color, a woman, someone disabled, someone queer (or an intersection of any of these groups) points out that certain fandom trends are bigoted in some shape or form, half the replies seem to be "but they are my comfort character! Maybe people just like them better because they are more interesting!" or even "people are allowed to have headcanons!" - the very daft even go for a "don't bring politics into fandom" which is a personal favorite because nothing exists in a vacuum and nothing is truly apolitical. But alas~

What most of these replies seemingly fail to understand is something very, very simple: it's not about you.

You, as an individual, are just one datapoint in a fandom. You are not the trend. You do not necessarily depict the typical behavior.

When someone points out that there is racism in fandom, that doesn't mean every fan is racist or perpetuating racist ideas*. By constantly mentioning your own lack of racism, quite often, you are actively derailing the conversation away from the problems at hand.

When someone names and describes a trend, they don't mean your headcanon specifically - they mean the accumulated number of headcanons perpetuating a harmful or outdated idea.

I am not saying this to forbid anyone from writing fics about their favorite characters or to keep anyone from having fun headcanons and sharing their theories and thoughts - quite the opposite actually. A critique of a general trend is not a critique of you as an individual - and you're going to have a much better, and more productive, time online if you can internalize that. If you stop growing defensive and instead allow yourself to actually digest the message of what was pointed out.

I am saying this to encourage some critical thinking.

Allow me to offer up some examples:

Case 1: A DC blogger made the daring statement that maybe Tim and Jason were such a popular fanfic focus because they are the only two undeniably white batboys. Immediately someone replied saying "no, it's all the fun traumatic situations we can put them in!". Which is an insane statement to make, considering the same can be said for literally ANY OTHER DC Batman and Batfam character.

The original post wasn't anything groundbreaking, they didn't accuse anyone, didn't name any names... but immediately there was a justification, immediately there was a reason why people might like these characters more. No one stopped to take a second and reflect on the current trends in fanfiction, no one considered that maybe this wasn't a declaration against people who like these characters but a thesis depicting the OVERALL trend of fandom once again focusing on undeniably white (and male) characters.

(don't get me started on the racebending of white characters in media that has a big Cast of Color and the implications of that)

Case 2: A meta posted on Ao3 about ableism in the Criminal Minds fandom caught my attention. A wonderful piece, very thoughtful, analyzing certain characterization choices within the fandom through the lens of an actually autistic person. The conclusion they reached: the writing of Spencer Reid as an autistic character, while often charming and comforting, tended to be incredibly infantilizing and at worst downright ableist. They came to that conclusion while CLEARLY stating that the individual fanfic wasn't the problem, but the general fandom trend in depicting this character.

Once again, looking at the replies seemed to be a mistake: while many comments furthered the discussion, there were quite a few which completely missed the point. Some were downright hostile. Because how dare this author imply that THEY are ableist when they write their favorite character using that specific characterization.

It didn't matter that the author allowed room for personal interpretation. It didn't matter that they noted something concerning about the entire fandom - people still thought they were attacking singular people.

Case 3: I wrote a fic about abortion in the FMA(b) fandom (actually I've written a weird amount of fics about abortion in a lot of fandoms, but alas) and I got hate comments for it. Because of that I addressed the bias in fandom against pro-choice depictions of pregnancies. I pointed out that the utter lack of abortion in many omegaverse stories or even mpreg or het romances, painted the picture of an unconscious bias that hurt people for whom abortion was the only option, the best possible ending. The response on the post itself was mostly positive, but I got anon hate.

(which I can unfortunately not show you since I deleted it in the months since)

And I'm not overly broken up about it, but it also underlines my point: by pointing at a general problem, a typical behavior, a larger trend... people feel personally attacked.

This inability to discuss sexism, ableism, racism, transphobia, etc in fandom without people turning defensive and hurt... well, it damages our ability to have these conversations at all.

Earlier I said YOU are not the problem - well, i think part of this discussion is acknowledging that: sometimes YOU are in fact part of the problem. And that's not the end of the world. But you can only recognize yourself as a cog in the machine, if you can examine your own actions, your own biases, your own preferences critically and without becoming defensive.

And, again, this is not to keep you from finding comfort in your favorite characters and headcanons. This is also not to say that I am free of biases and internalized bigotries - I am also very much a part of the system. A part of the problem.

This is so you can comfortably ask yourself "but why is there no abortion in this universe?" or "why are my favorite black characters always the top in my slash ships?" or "why do I write this disabled character as childish and in need of help?" - and sometimes the answer is "because I am disabled and I want comfort", and that's fine too.

There is no one shoe fits all in fiction. There is not a single trope that captures all members of a group. There is no single stereotype that isn't also someone's comfort. No group is a monolith, no experienced all-encompasing (or entirely unique).

There is never a simple answer.

But that doesn't mean you should stop questioning your own biases, your own ideals.

Especially, if you grow defensive if someone points out that a certain trend you engage in might be racist. Or sexist. Or queerphobic. Or fucking ableist.

*this does not mean negate the general anti-blackness perpetuated by most cultures as a result of colonialism and slavery

#criminal minds #dc #batman #racism #fandom racism #fandom #fandom discourse #sexism #fandom sexism #ableism #fandom ableism #discourse #fma #fmab #abortion #abortion rights #pro choice #opening up a discussion about having discussions