that's why I'm here. for the words.

Shane Hollander routinely uses sunscreen(for safety against skin cancer) and washes his face with a sensitive skin friendly soap in the shower. He uses the same bar for his entire body.

Beyond that his smooth skin is entirely coincidental. Ilya is very jealous of this. Ilya wears hair products, styles himself meticulously and has tried multiple skincare routines. None of which are giving him the supple skin he desires.

The first time Ilya goes to Shane's real apartment and not the sex condo he is outraged by the number of unused samples of skincare products, mostly because these brands are choosing to work with Shane when he knows for a fact that Shane does nothing to properly take care of his skin.

Shane's bathroom sink is barren.

Shane *enters Ilya's bathroom*: why do you have so much clutter in here

Ilya *outraged*: is not clutter Hollander we did not all climb out of womb and become world's prettiest man by accident

Shane *having no filter*: why do you bother with it if it doesn't work?

hudson: nah man i'm so busy idk if i can

hudsons friends: your character kisses a man

hudson:

hudson: nah man i'm so busy idk if i can

hudsons friends: your character kisses a man

hudson:

hudson:

is this a safe space ermmm.... (Shane version too maybe 👀👀)

I saw this photo posted by autoerot.ca on Instagram n I just thought it was sooooo Ilya

enjoy 🫶

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.