someone blah blah

A full breakdown of the nuances of how this comic applies is more for another post-- being a fan is not a marginalized identity in the way say, being another type of identity is, which is what this comic is likely about-- but I'll touch on some stuff later.

⚠️ Disclaimers:

Let me be clear. Neither top down nor bottom up is a more or less 'moral' way of doing fandom than the other. If anything, I think all parties involved could actually probably benefit from more of a mentality of ‘I like this purely just cause it makes me horny, actually, and that’s fine’— but that’s also for another post. As a baseline, anyone can make what they want, at the end of the day, and also probably have different reasons for making what they make than I do.   This is more of a 'how do I enlist the inspiring way you think with your dick to my cause, my cause being inflicting maximum specific horny devastation upon fictional men via means so canonically convincing I can project it onto the screen of my brain theater’ type situation. More on that at the end.  Also, simply, there is some stuff I find irritating. And I'm trying to understand why it's happening.

With that out of the way, I’m arguing that top down fandom is more bland and annoying as a cultural practice than the alternative.

(And while I think it does make a certain kinds of community, I low key think the ones made by bottom up are stronger, more vulnerable, and more specific than those made by top down fandom, but that is definitely some heavy personal bias, so…. shrug.)

I'm writing this now because top down fandom is, imo:

Proliferating more widely/becoming much more robust due to social media and the increasingly convergent nature of fandom spaces on the internet

Shortening fandom lifecycles (or at least, the perception of a fandom lifecycle)

Kind of eliding the whole point of creating a FAN works, not just an original ones

Diluting the works of bottom up fandom with the aforementioned OOC work by producing it at a high volume and shaping fanon characterizations

My current fandom, The Pitt, is a fucking FASCINATING case study of all of this happening, especially points 3 and 4. I wrote a post about Daddy Dom Robby here for anyone who, for whatever reason, wants to read even MORE blathering, this time about how top down fandom has shaped a specific character. 

Btw, I’m going to use the word ‘media’ a lot. Media = book, movie, TV show, play, webcomic, etc. ‘IP’ might be another way to describe it. 

So what actually could top down and bottom up fandom be? Besides thinly veiled names??

My definitions of these modes: 

⬇️ Top down: 

Fans start at the level of trope (ex: enemies-to-lovers, arranged marriage, puppy play, D/s, omegaverse), then seek out media that fits that trope* 

Community and conversation mostly around center tropes themselves, versus media; Media acts as a more superficial veil/vehicle for trope 

Media also acts as a superficial vehicle for self insert— lusting directly after a character can be the only way of participating. The fan themselves is closely woven in as an innate part of praxis  

Populated mostly by fans who are there BECAUSE of lowered barrier to entry; these are fans who likely would not be participating in fandom at all without its ease of accessibility. What they’re getting out of their fandom engagement would have been achieved by other means, or gone unmet 

All of this results in fanworks that aren’t specific, IE, that you could swap the names for those of other characters, or make up your own, and it wouldn’t make a difference. This also means this praxis exists an interesting, enmeshed relationship with the booming romantasy fiction genre, which is increasingly selling to readers based on tropes 

⬆️ Bottom up: 

Fans are engaged with the media itself, with discovery of different tropes triggered while still within the story realm of the media. Community and conversation is around the media specifically

Following creators (fannish or original) from media to media, allowing for discovery of new themes, dynamics, and kinks 

Typically, the fan themselves factors less into the fanwork, if at all (ie avoiding x reader stories) 

Populated by fans who are tolerant of friction and barriers to entry because what they get out of fandom can’t be fully satisfied in other places; would find their way into fannish spaces/made fan works even in previous eras of fandom that were far less centralized

This results in fanworks that are very specific to the thing they are fan works OF; that if the names were swapped, it would be much harder to make them make sense without the source work 

(Honestly if you’re an old man shaking your fist at a cloud right now about how 'things used to be different' you’re probably in this one)

Basically, why does a fan get into a given fandom in the first place, and once they're there, how long do they stay there? What is the longevity and complexity of their participation?

I argue that top down fans and bottom up fans look different.

Some questions you may be having:

*“But Softs, you’re ignoring that basically everyone in fandom has stuff that are patently Their Things and we all know it! We aren’t just blank slates waiting to get it up for the next Great Work that happens across our eyeballs because we can’t help but be blasted by its sheer genius! We have Preferences!”  

Soooooo true. 

I'll talk about myself as an example since I know that person best. I myself am an absolute carpetbagger for media where guys have weird relationships with their moms. SHRUG. 

I love Dune. I love The Penguin. Friends who know and love me will even say ‘Softs, I think you’d really like this thing because a dude has a weird relationship with his mom.’ And then I watch it, and yeah, I do like it. 

HOWEVER, to me, it’s what happens after that point that is really significant. Once that specific relationship has been explored, if I’m having fannish brainworms about the thing…. I stick around.

I’m, generally, sucked into the media as a whole. I’m sat for it. I’m learning about other tropes, pairings, emotional dynamics that weren’t that thing I came in for— the master key gene that unlocks the series of other gene expressions behind it has been activated, as my friend says, and I’m in. I’m trying to throw it back, mix it, and reverse that dynamic in new and different ways. 

So, while I love Dune and The Penguin, and they both have weird mom-son stuff going on, I think my fanworks about those two things (and love of them) are VERY different.

I only have the clues of how top down fans operate via social media. However, this doesn't seem to be how this goes in that camp.

“But isn’t this just a thinly veiled argument about ‘well written fanfic’ versus ‘badly written fanfic??” 

Sort of! There has always, always, ALWAYS been OOC fic out there. PWPs where it’s truly just barbie dolls mashing together with faces pasted on. This is innate to fandom lifeblood, and my boilerplate disclaimer reads as such. It is totally fine that it exists and I have enjoyed it. God knows I have CREATED it. However, I think this isn't quite the same, because of the context in which it's created.  

The end result may look kind of similar, but one of the key points I'm trying to make is how in top down fandom especially, trope vocabulary, features, and storytelling conventions have started to develop a life of their own that exists metatextually outside of the media property itself.

Here's an example:

In a BU approach, the way puppy play as a kink is written in fanfic of the PItt will look different from, say, Supernatural. Fanworks with this kink will certainly share the basic features of what’s required (humans acting like dogs and probably having sex about it) but dynamics, vocabulary, and themes are mainly in conversation with other fanworks from that same fandom. 

In bottom up praxis, the way writers do puppy play in the Pitt will look different from how writers do puppy play in Supernatural, because those media contexts are just so different. 

In top down praxis, they'd look similar.

(How puppy play has been popularized and handled in the Pitt fandom as a case study of this is genuinely another post I want to write).

TL;DR, yeah, OOC fanfic is endemic to fandom, but top down fandom is a more widely reaching thing.

“So…..what’s to be done about all this??”  

For bottoms (lol) who don’t want to deal with tops (lol), I’m sorry, but it’s on us to save ourselves from this.

We need to wall off our own gardens. Nobody else is gonna re-revert it. I just saw a post drifting around that was like ‘we need to make another AO3 but this one is new and secret’ and low key we can do that via open source tools, Mastodon instances, and other ways to basically re-divide up online spaces. An additional method, which is partially the point of this post, is a bid to appeal to others (especially newer fans on the come up) to potentially help them see how rewarding it is to like. Go bottom up for the first time. SORRY I’m having too much fun with the silly names.

But, for real, have you ever experienced the absolute pure high of having that thing you want– that kink, that moment– but it’s ALSO in character and makes sense in conversation with the original text??? Which imo is why you create FAN works rather than original works? 

Maybe they never, will because they do fandom stuff for different reasons than I do. But. Genuinely. It’s. A rush. It’s so good. 

And it’s so so so worth the work. 

(If you've made it this far.... I'd love to hear if this lines up with what you've seen of fandom spaces in the comments! This is my bid at gathering together my most cohesive thoughts on the matter, but there's still a ton to be covered. Thanks for reading.