icedlostea !

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I see a lot of people like "oh fandom used to be-!" but I'm here to tell you that no: it didn't. Look at one of the great Harry Potter wanks for examples: MsScribe made multiple sockpuppet accounts to bash a ship she didn't like, and to stir drama about what would now be called "purity wank." The war between Harry/Hermione and Hermione/Ron shippers was so fierce that entire websites rose and fell according to the tides of battle.

I remember fierce struggles between the original "shippers" (Mulder/Scully) and "noromos" (anti-shippers) in X-Files fandom in the nineties. I've gotten "flames" (harassment) for "making characters gay" in the Stargate and LotR fandoms. Sporking used to be a thing, for gods' sakes!

Fandom has always had toxicity, and the levels/flavor of that toxicity has been different depending on what fandom you've been in, but the general level of wank has not seen a steep increase over time, imo.

If you think there's been an increase:

You may have previously been in fandoms / pockets of fandom with a low level of toxicity, and either it changed over time or you moved to a fandom with a higher level of toxicity;

You may have not noticed toxicity because you were in the popular crowd, or bc toxicity was mostly directed outward from the groups you were in;

The subject of toxicity changed from topics you could brush off / dismiss / ignore (or was even the type of toxicity you "agreed" with or thought was "justified") to subjects that actively made you uncomfortable;

You just weren't aware of extant toxicity before and you are now (either bc of inexperience/naivete or bc nobody you knew was targeted, and that's changed now).

But to reiterate: the proportion of toxicity in fandom has not changed. Fandom has gotten bigger overall so there are more wankers than before, but the percentage of wankers and harassers haven't changed. And the tools/verbage they used may change, but the underlying nastiness hasn't increased.

Ya cannot own tropes, or scenes readers expect in a certain genre. No one owns a femme fatal in a noir. No one owns the concept of a third act breakup in a romance novel. No one owns the concept of hurt/comfort or earning your happy ending. No one owns fantasy, or ABO/omega verse if you’ll recall that lawsuit from some years back. If someone did not literally take your words as their own in the sphere of fiction they are doing their own thing and you should leave them alone. Please mellow out for your own sanity and happiness.