#askgwfans

Thanks everyone for taking the time to add your perspective. For everyone reading, feel free to reblog with your own answers to any of these questions, or send in some questions of your own.

Without further ado, lets do an easy warm up post this week. The answers are in no particular order, let me know if I should be keeping answers from a single responder together 

Did you take a break from GW fandom? If so, what made you come back?

I took a ~10 year break for school and work. The pandemic got me looking back on my old hobbies and I went looking fanfic that I used to love. It was supposed to be just a quick tip toe into nostalgia but that was back in November and here we are.

There have been periods when I've been less active (especially if you look at my publishing history), and I haven't always hung out in the most popular fandom bases, but even during my quieter periods if I'd been asked "are you still part of this fandom" my answer would have been definitively yes. I think one of the great things about fandom is that it's for us to participate in on our own terms and what it means to be "in" a fandom is a huge net.

A friend of mine wanted to read my old fics but I wasn’t on AO3, so I made an account.

More like I just drifted away. I'd peek back every now and then. But now my new good friends are all in the gw Fandom so I'm much more involved than before

Yes - I organically lost interest in fandom after I first got into GW (2000s) due to RL, came back because I finally had time to sit down and (re)watch the series during COVID.

Which characters/ships are you most interested in? What do you appreciate most about them?

Oh, gosh. I love a well-written rare pair or a seemingly crack ship that, when you read it, suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore. And likewise, the characters that you don't see being written so often. GW has such a rich ensemble cast to draw from, I like seeing fresh faces get a turn in the spotlight and treated with the same depth as the usual favorites.

I am definitely a 1xR fan first and foremost, but I also love all the GW ladies. Relena was always a favorite because she was probably the first female character I had ever really seen that stood her own with the male characters. She was just super interesting - a feminine, peaceful character that becomes a world leader? And not through magic? Sign me up! Coming back into fandom I started going over the ladies' personalities. I find Dorothy to be absolutely fascinating as a character with her shit-disturbing ways. Hilde, Catherine, Noin, Une. I love that they're given individual strengths and flaws, and each have their own roles that aren't necessarily just supporting the male characters. Even today it can be rare to find a female character that has a personality, history and role all to her own.

Quatre and I don’t have enough space to even go into this, haha. I ship him mostly with Trowa and Duo.

I generally will try most non 3x4 Trowa ships. I lean most towards 1x3 and 3x5, though somehow I got into 3x6 at the end of my first run in fandom, probably because the one writer who got me into it was so funny. I think for whatever reason, I just ended up in Trowa-centric mailing lists for 1x3, 2x3, and 5x3, and Trowa-centric, and the 1x3 and 5x3 lists were the more active ones. I do remember feelings those stories were really unique. The one 5x3 that I remember from my first run was actually super edge-lordy and ended with murder/suicide (it was a very messed up story!!!!). What stuck in my mind was how that writer managed to treat the pilots somewhat opposite of how most others wrote them - arguably straight up OOC for the sake of exploring a darker story, but it also was the first time I think that Wufei was the nice guy/hero and not just a side character wingman. This is similar to why I got into 6x3 - a specific writer was just a fucking hoot about the way they wrote both Trowa and Zechs, and whether it's OOC or not, it was probably the first time I had read anything that funny in fanfiction (especially in stories with sex/smut). So I guess the TLDR is that the stories that happened to really change my mind on characters and/or fic as a medium strongly influenced why I like certain ships. They were also probably arguably very OOC which also influences how I approach fanworks.

What's a character/ship you've learned to appreciate? What made you change your mind?

Relena x Dorothy. Both as characters and as a ship. Part of this is that I hadn't seen all of the series at the time I first did fandom, but I had seen Endless Waltz, and that was the extent to which I had known Dorothy. She doesn't even interact with Relena in EW!! I had no impression of her (besides whomst??), and I honestly don't even remember if Relena ever appeared in fics I read since a lot of them were AUs anyway. However, after seeing the series and MISS RELENA and all of Dorothy's... Dorothy, I think she's got some great cult appeal!! And my mind really changed on both when I saw the whole series properly. I'm not sure I would have been on board with them at the time since I was less discerning about how female characters often get developed poorly, but I don't regret that I experienced Relena and Dorothy fully at a time where I could appreciate them.

I eventually started to appreciate Relena more, she grows up a lot by the end, even if she definitely should not be handling the responsibility she has...

Honestly breaking outside of the typical ships by reading more fics broadened my horizons. Writers I loved ventured into non-typical and I found myself enjoying the exploration. I think over time it had less to do with the ship and more to do with the characters as the fandom aged.

I've been reading a lot more yaoi since interacting with the larger fandom. I've always loved non-traditional gender roles in romance stories, and I don't know why it took me so long to try yaoi? I've read some yuri but never in Gundam Wing. Interacting with the yaoi community has opened up a lot more characterization of the pilots for me, which have always played the role of "tough, emotionless boys" in my headcanons.

Howard. He’s amazing and hilarious and as I get older I’m more and more like, is this the only sane character? I used to just be like “who is this weird guy?” and now I’m like “why isn’t there more Howard?”

What characters/ships do you think got some negative flack? How has the GW fandom's attitudes towards those characters/ships changed?

The scientists hahahahahaahah. I think for the most part unless you are in a niche group, the scientists are generally seen as child abusers to varying degrees. Tsubarov? Everyone still hates him but acknowledge he has a flair for the dramatique. Camp villain appreciation I guess. Relena was definitely shat on, being at the unfortunate intersection of romantic rival and 'annoying' female lead. Again, as someone whose canon experience was informed by Endless Waltz more than the anime, I don't remember if I had any opinions on her at all. However, I think people have admitted where they were wrong (whether owning up to bashing, or speaking up about fandom broadly).

Well besides the obvious Relena, one character that got so much hate and bashing in 1xR circles was Sylvia. I remember one of the first things I checked when I got back into fandom was Sylvia's role in the show and was surprised to see how little she actually does?? She's literally in one episode but was constantly dragged into 1xR stories to be a romantic rival for Relena. Pretty much the same role Relena took on in a lot of 1x2 stories. I guess we just got away with it because she was a minor character. It was just interesting to me that 1xR fans gave some girl the same treatment that 1x2 fans did to Relena. I think that realization helped me put aside the Relena bashing and move on from it. If I don't see Sylvia as an evil character anymore, why would Relena bashers? And I was really happy to find that I was right. As the fandom moved away from romance-centric plots to look at self growth and politics, less characters became target for fandom hate/bashing, and we moved on.

Well, back in the olden days Relena and Wufei were probably the ones who got it worst. Dorothy. Hilde. Zechs. Treize. Heck, even reasonably popular characters like Duo and Quatre had their own "defense" societies against some of the fanon surrounding them. But fans have grown up over the years and portrayals of the characters and various ships have too. (2x5 for instance has gone from a total rare pair to one of the top GW ships on AO3 which I find a fascinating trajectory.) Have we evolved into a perfect utopia? No, and there will probably always be complaints about how a given character or ship is popularly portrayed. I certainly have my bugbears, just like anyone else might. But it's a long time since I've opened up a fic and seen character bashing of the sort that was common c. 2001. People might not be shy about sharing their opinions on their own blogs, but picking fights on other people's content? Flame wars? Not so much these days. The GW fandom might be smaller, but we're also closer-knit. Fandom is about having fun; finding the pockets that bring you enjoyment and finding ways to filter out the rest, and I think we mostly get that (or we're just too old and tired to have much fight left in in us lol).

Well, very early Relena and Duo battles made me nervous of the fandom back in the day, but I think those mainly came from places within ourselves that we can see now don’t need to be at odds. I love them both and I am glad to see the fandom embrace them both on their own merits. I think it’s easy to be anti- when you are younger and appreciative when you are older (and I totally understand how people could be anti! No judgements. I just love everyone and want everyone to be happy. Except Zechs. He has some SERIOUS explaining to do.)

Oh, Relena *definitely* had a lot of negative flack. I'm glad most of us seem to have mellowed out about the poor girl. It's hard to hate a kid when one is in their 30's, lol

The Gundam Wing fandom is small and dedicated, but also old with a lot of fandom history. This blog is dedicated to connecting old and new fans over topics that have come up over and over again.

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Hoping to have enough in the next week to publish next week. Hopefully we’ll publish something ever ~2 weeks until we ramp up some engagement :)