Let’s Pretend I’m Normal About Media

I'm not sure if the twine link will work, so let me know if I need to try to find another way to upload it! I'm also not sure if I have all of the five choices and stuff. I have a cumulative of 14 boxes, which I'm not sure if that means I've hit the five choices or not! (some choices also go to the same box!)

I'm not sure if the link to the twine will work or not, so let me know if I need to adjust the link somehow! I'm also not sure if I've hit the five choices or not, but I have a cumulative of 12 boxes (some choices go to the same box!)

Game Reskin of Clue.

It's a little hard to remake the board of Clue in Canva, but I tried!

How the game works: one location is the way out of the facility. Each player rolls a dice and moves their token around to each location and they ask other players questions about the location they have landed in. Each player should have cards that gives an ambiguous clue about the location. The players will interpret what the ambiguous clues about what the environment means. These interpretations could help them solve where the exit is or send them off on a completely different track.

After moving through to a few different locations, each player must decide where they think is the way out and then the right way out will be revealed at the end.

Locations: The road, the farm, the wall, the security, the tank, or the crowd.

Cards: ambiguous details about each environment, purposefully open for interpretation

Designs of the board (best I could do with limited space on Canva!):

Note: Each location is an image from the game. The black squares connecting each location represents where the player can move.

Designs of ambiguous environment description cards:

Link to Canva for better quality: https://www.canva.com/design/DAF02WPxP24/d639Cxmmy74zrPRgqd9TtA/edit?utm_content=DAF02WPxP24&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Note: The interactive fanfic is the first fandom work, but I've completed the game reskins, so I'm marking these as fandom work 1.

Game Reskin of Apples to Apples.

Judge cards are replaced by archetype/soul cards. If don’t see an archetype (Nice, Gay, The Hero, etc.) that you align with, there are blank soul cards for you to put your own archetype. The archetype/soul cards have a picture of the characters from Generation Loss, you can draw yourself or something to represent you in the blank soul cards.

Some basic rules:

Soul cards and Personality Cards

First begin by choosing which character best aligns with yourself (can also be randomly assigned) and this will represent you in the game. You will now embody one of these archetypes: Ranboo (the Hero), Slimecicle (Demon), Nikki (Nice), Ethan (Unemployed), Austin (Gay), Vinny (Hoarder), Puzzler (Mastermind), Sneeg (Rebel)

Other players assign personality traits they think you (Character or actual player) have and through playing different personality cards, the “judge” of that round will learn more about themselves and what others think of them.

Designs of Soul/archetype cards (these are transferred from Canva so sorry for the blur!):

Designs of Personality cards:

Link to Canva for better quality: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFzCcouEWg/IUx02DvRSPW5o7jrXo7lSA/edit?utm_content=DAFzCcouEWg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Card game description: Discourse Apologist is similar to Apples to Apples and Aye Dark Overlord where there will be one "fandom" card while the other players get 5 "descriptors" cards and 3 "whatabout" cards. Players begin by placing what they think is the proper description of the fandom (e.g., the fandom card "music" is drawn, players can place descriptor cards like "loud," "powerful," "elegant" -- maybe also musical artists, too, idk) and then they have to describe why that is perfect for the fandom/why they love that descriptor with fandom. Once the judge chooses, the first two players to offer an objection can play a "whatabout" card and try to describe why the winner is wrong and why that thing is actually "bad" instead. If they're convincing enough, they can steal the point. Players only get 3 "whatabout" cards for the game.

The characters can play as:

Players can also choose different roles for the game if they would like: Discourse Jockey or Apologist. Creator is always whoever is judging the round (think: Aye Dark Overload, someone plays as the Dark Overload). Discourse Jockey gets two extra "whatabout" cards and can get extra points if they can convince the judge they're right. The Apologist gets two "debate" cards and can counter-argue the Discourse Jockey.

Narrative: The narrative would change depending on what "descriptor" card is paired with the "Whatabout" and/or "debate" cards as the players try to defend/fight against their fandom.

Win/lose the game: You win the game once you collect five points or however many points the players would like to have each round last. You lose the game when you run out of cards or fail to convince the other person.

Incorporate different types of fandom: since there's "fandom" cards already, each "fandom" card would represent different fandoms: music, sports, actor, etc.

How incorporate concepts of toxic fandom & anti-fandom:

The game centers around playing into the ideas of toxic fandom, anti-fandom, and fandom. Since the game plays into the idea of the toxic fan and fan culture, the game allows players to explore that side of fandom as they try to engage with it and through their engagement they learn about toxic fandom and how to spot them.

Examples below in order show:

Fandom card

Descriptor card

Whatabout card

Debate card

My group talked about the Steven Universe controversy involving an artist on Tumblr and her drawing of Rose Quartz as skinny and "cultural appropriation" for drawing Fluttershy as a Native American character. An organized group on Tumblr users harassed her to the point of attempted suicide and 40 blogs and such were made to specifically target this artist. The harassers contacted the showrunners to try to get their defense, but the showrunners denounced them; the harassers did not regret their decisions.

In regards to Tumblr as a platform, people can reblog, post, tag, comment, etc. which allowed for the harassers to launch a wide spread assault on the artist, including making a Pepe meme of her after she made a drawing of herself. Tumblr has a lack of moderation which made it easier for them to target her and she had to be her own moderator. The reblogs, tags, comments, posts, etc. allows for greater shareability for this hate to spread further and creation and tagging also allowed for the artist to be directly tagged in any hateful post. Furthermore, the background affordances involve creating tumblr blogs specifically to target this artist and "collect their problematic behavior"

When discussing the ethics, we covered the Rights lens and how everyone has a right to make art as a means of personal expression and engage in art as they choose. We also discussed the Justice lens and how the harassers miscarried justice in an attempt to "give the artist their dues" by taking it upon themselves to call them out for "cultural appropriation" art that she apologized for and took down. We also discussed the lack of the Utilitarian lens and how the harassers did not care to minimize harm in their "attempt of good" but rather mixed their "attempt of good" as a cover for their hate.

Gods:

K'siu - North Star, guide

Corvus, The Fallen - (former) warrior of the stars

Alcove, The Promised - representative of Past

Desare, The Night - representative of the Future

Altair, The Morning - representative of the Present

Ursas, Bear Flight - twin bears, god of the hunt

Apus, of Passion - heart of the world

Colossus - the sun

And more!

What purpose: guide and watch over the Earth. Sometimes they come down to help and guide lost souls. They can be called upon to help their devotees (i.e., Ursas, Bear Flight can be called upon to help with hunt). Sometimes they are just beacons of hope and refuge

Style of worship: depends on the god. For K'siu, leave out a tail (made or from an animal of your choosing) to call upon her for guidance. For The Fates (Alcove, Desare, Altair), leave a ball of fraying twine and hope they will answer you. For Ursas, draw tracks of the animal youre hunting in the dirt and/or offer baskets of food. For Apus, share a meal with a close friend and/or place your beloved items in a box of feathers.

Myths & Legends: its said Colossus is made of pieces from every star in existence and thats why its so large and so bright

Government:

The Network - where all the stars live, looks like the inside of an onion cell.

Oligarchy - The Fates rule over everyone else, and everyone's usually in their own little space so its harder for people to spread ideas and try to take over. The Fates overtook Deus (the one true eternal god) and cast him from the stars where he lives on the surface as a black hole taken physical form.

How complex is power - power is complex because The Fates are mostly in control overall, but the other stars have their own abilities and power within their domains/among their devotees. Power can shift between The Fates

Culture/Social structure:

What is family: Family is chosen and discovered among the stars themselves. Sometimes its a matter of just who makes up their constellation and other times its a matter of if their star is in close proximity to another.

Rites of Passage: going down to the earth for the first time/first devotee. First Night is also a big thing which is the first night you as a star appear in the sky

Geography:

The Network (where the stars live in the sky) looks like an onion cell with each individual little box representative of one section of the network

Onion cell for visuals^

The world below looks like Earth but made of little villages, lots of open fields and smooth hills that become cliffs and ocean if you walk far enough. Looks like New Zealand landscape

Travel: the stars can go to and fro the earth if they're called. Most of the time though, they must send a message through K'siu who can travel freely between The Network and Earth to deliver messages.

Magic:

Each star has their own unique magic tailored to what kind of star they are/their purpose. The Ursas have the magic to sniff out whoever she needs to. Corvus, as a warrior can transform parts of her body into a weapon and can also transform into a crow. Every star has to extend a bit of their stardust (blood) in order to do magic and each star is bound by their chosen forms in order to do magic/cant be conceptual to do it

How is it learned: as each star forms, their stardust takes a form and in that form they learn what they can and cant do. For example, Corvus' stardust took the form of a crow in her protostar phase (newborn star) and from then on, Corvus could know how to fly but to what extent had to be tested and figured out as she grows into a full adult star where her form will be stable and her magic stable, too.

In summary: This autoethnography summarizes the various ways I interact with fandom and how each one has shaped me differently. My relationship to every media is fundamentally different, as this will share. I've learned that while in style and talk I haven't been effected by fandom, creatively and the themes that carry with me, has.

Note: My peer review partners did not suggest changes, so I've kept it as is with the summary above added.

My experience as a fan ebbs and flows between deeply engrossed in the tv show/book/series, etc. to casually enjoying. With the former, I’m on Tumblr reblogging GIFs and fanworks like a madman, occasionally rambling in the tags about x character’s arc and y’s characterization and — fuck, tumblr user Kinegg, you must be a prophet from the Gods. Modified the actual user’s name there, but their take on Collector from The Owl House? Absolutely immaculate. Even in my fandom spaces, I can’t escape my writing-major-ness, and I really search for those users who share my love of analysis of characters/themes/subtext. It’s crazy the amount of essays that will be poured out over what could be a single line, a single painting, a piece of clothing.

In the Owl House (spoilers —albeit somewhat vague — ahead!), users poured essays over the tapestries in the Archive house and what they meant for the Collector’s backstory. I had found myself following along with their detailed descriptions and theories in such a way that I rewatched the scenes they mentioned and found myself nodding along to their takes: of course Collector is an orphan of war! Of course his siblings didn’t like him mixing with the titans! Of course this parallels the segregated magic system!

Surprisingly, despite the glory and beauty of anonymity, and my deep love of character analysis, I’ve never actually thrown my hat — or, well, a post — into the void, into my fandom community. Instead, I stay to the tags or rambles in friends’ DMs.

Here’s a particular long example about the game Dredge, another fandom favorite of mine taken from a friend’s DMs.

Massive spoilers ahead for the game!

Just the fact that like… it’s been Y o u and it’s always been Y o u just augghhhhhhhh when hands of love become hands of destruction and you burn away every piece of yourself resisting the natural course of grief because goddamn !!!!! You *will* bring them back !!!! But if you do, they can’t recognize you anymore, and if you can’t, then you destroy every part of yourself trying and just aughhhhhhhhh aughhhhhhhh just the way grief warps every part of you until all you can think of is *them* I just augghhgghhhhhhhh and then you can’t move on because to move on would be to leave them would mean it was all for nothing and you’ve come so far to stop and it’s just another step and then they’ll back and just another step until they’ll be back and just another step until you have buried yourself neck-deep in the ocean and still you will go one more step because you’re !!! So !!! Close !!! But !!! You !!! Can never!!! Be close !!! And just aughhhhhhhhh

Okay so there’s like three main colors, right? This sorta dark purple red — raspberry-esque — this sorta slightly darker sea foam green and I think there’s either like a yellow or another green, can’t remember. I think it’s another green. There’s also the colors of different fishing areas: coastal, shallow, dredge, abyssal, hadal, but not important I’m taking about the dialogue and some item colors

So — and as you can guess — the colors coincide with their usual associations: red is bad, green is good, etc. now what’s interesting is that parts of the horror elements come with that color association that “oh red is evil/corrupt” and so there’s a really neat sorta psychological element of like when a text reads “be careful” and it’s in red and those color associations tell you that “oh no something bad” and the like. But what’s really really fucking cool and sorta subtle is that during the game this “Collector” guy — so cool lore around this guy but won’t spoil anything if you wanna play/watch — asks you fish up some relics for him and in exchange he compensates you very nicely with some nice power ups that are very much Monkey’s Paw-esque.

So, you fish up some of the relics: necklace, ring, music box, key, watch, and other stuff and when you put them in your inventory, the items are *red* whereas usual items like wood or metal or non-relic rings are just like grey or whatever. Now what’s also red you may ask? Four things, but let’s talk about the first two first. One: mutant fish. Sometimes when you’re fishing you’ll pull out an oddity like a bass with three heads or its spine out—something mangled and warped beyond recognition. And that, too, is *red* in your inventory whereas regular fish are like grey

Two: panic. So, if you stay up too late you start to get this thing called “panic” and it presents itself as an eye appearing under the time looking around worried and not only that but everything gets red like a red fog and rocks may appear out of nowhere or scarier creatures start to chase you—it’s a lot like a gameplay mechanic of “oops you’ve stayed up too late now you’re paranoid and seeing things that aren’t there or are they” kinda thin

Three: crimson and silver book, which is the source of corruption happening in this place and causing all the auroras to turn red and shit to get warped and corrupted and stuff

Four: infection. One of which you never actively see so much as much as you just see a dialogue of a package you can deliver saying that it’s “squelching and wet” or something like that

And so back to relics and mutant fish! If you notice those colors when the mutant fish appear, you can start to notice that hey !!!! These relics you are fetching are fucking cursed !!! And not only that but like when you use the “power ups” that fetching the relics gets you, they come with a cost

So like the power-ups you get are: haste (move faster, but increase panic), manifest (teleport back to the first island, increase panic/time speeds up), atrophy (catch a whole area of fish in one go, fish rot and get infected faster), and I thiiiiiiink one has to do with like sounding a signal to scare fish away or something like that

But like all of them are strengths that come at a cost!!!!! Which feeds into the narrative of “everything has a cost/you cannot get what you want without sacrifice” and just that theme of time and madness and aughhhhhhhh power comes with sacrifice and you are losing a piece of yourself for every “power-up”

And like!!!!!!!! Everyone knows more about you than you do!!!! And like they are just watching you spiral once again and once again and once again and just aughhhh aughhhh everyone knows of the madness except for you

And then you have green!!! Green is like the stuff that’s good, that’s helpful!! And like you see certain characters who dialogue highlights some words in green !!! And you can tell “oh yes this is friend, they are good” like the lighthouse keeper who is wearing green and has green dialogue occasionally !!

And then you have the other green as like “location for you to go” and again it’s like you can use these colors to 1. Make things easier to remember 2. Have a psychological impact 3. Associations !!!!!!!! And it’s just such a subtle thing to impact how you intake and receive information and hints to the overall corruption of the items you’re fetching and the corruption of the book itself and just aughhhh aughhh aughhh aughhhh

God and just the eye imagery is so cool fucking love eye imagery !!! But god yeah just the fact that it’s you and it’s always *been you* AND THE POCKET WATCH!!!! One of the relics is a pocket watch whose hands cannot move forward because you !!! Cannot !!! Move forward !!! You cannot move on !!! And you keep finding pieces of your life you can’t remember and aughhhhhhh!!!! Aughhhhhhhh

God. Just….. unable to move forward without That Person in your life, unable to move on, the need to rewrite what was written, to grab death by the bones and shatter them until your beloved has returned, until your beloved has returned and sees not a shadow of who they knew and just…. God.

You were always bait……. You were always the hook on the fishing line going to and fro… all to see her again, all to see her again…. And everyone knows except You that she isn’t coming back and will never come back and still you will burn yourself to pieces to try

*Goddamn* just unable to go back, unable to play god, unable to bend the forces of nature to your whims. Aughhhhhhhhh

As the above long example suggests: I love the deep analyses and most importantly the emotional core of any given work. As I said, couldn’t escape my writing-major-ness even if I wanted to and that dips into my main fandom experience: fanfiction writing.

Surprisingly, it’s only Gen loss and Gravity Falls I’ve written fanfiction for. Gravity Falls was the first, of course, and I still remember the cringey Wattpad “Author Notes” — a staple of the ol’ era of a 12-year old’s writing in 2013. I haven’t revisited those old Wattpad fics and I never will, but I know for all their cringe, they’ve been stepping stones for my writing.

Gravity Falls, especially, hugely influenced what became of my writing style and interests. The show introduced a world that balanced its lightheartedness with moments that had you staring at your screen like “what the fuck just happened?” and it balanced those moments beautifully. Not only that, but the premise of “normal kids move in to weird town but everyone who lives there just kinda deals with the weird stuff so it’s normal to them” has become one of my favorite things to write. I think what I like the most about that kind of premise is that it challenges the idea of what normal even is. Especially since “normal” means something different across cultures and what I, as an American, may find completely normal (let’s say, steering wheel on the left instead of the right), completely boggles the mind of someone who’s never seen that. To them, I’m the weirdo, and to me, they are the weirdo, but neither one of us is wrong or right and that’s the beauty of it.

This lends itself into the question of “us” vs. “them” — again, thinking about the “what is normal?” — that appears in some spaces in fandom. I think an “us” vs. “them” in fandom comes from the lack of acknowledgment that no one is right and that’s okay. There’s definitely a huge “us” vs. “them” in fandom spaces when it comes to shipping. Personally, I’ve never really understood why some people feel so personally to certain ships, and I’ve never really cared, but maybe it has something to do with what Jensen talks about: compensating and parasocial relationships.

For me, I find myself less compensating and more so either exploring pieces of myself through the other (a lot of this with grief narratives as found in Dredge) or examining other people. Characters and studying them and their actions is fascinating for me and I find that understanding characters allows me to be better at understanding people in my own life. After all, what is the self if not a character we all play?