#fandom fandom

What they mean: every fucking new thing is on discord and discord moves too fucking fast just like IRC moved too FUCKING fast and who was the dingus that decided chat was a great platform for fandom content anyway? I don't have the social capital for my fanworks to be noticed even based on hitcount, let alone interaction based metrics, I feel unappreciated and forgotten, and I wish, I wish I could recapture the feeling of making friends and not the feeling of sitting skip a seat over from someone else's clique that claims I'm welcome but talks over me every time I open my mouth or perhaps worse, pauses and "so anyway"s me when I get an idea through my brain and out past my fingers but the conversation has already slipped through eight different topics and it feels like everyone all talking at once in an enclosed space, the echo of it is an unbearable din, I am in sensory hell and why, and how, is the most welcoming place I've found in years the pimple popping subreddit r/popping?

I am sbooks! I post about book history and fanfiction in all their overlapping and distinct facets. I wrote my MA dissertation, which I recently made available to read via Google Drive, on why fanfiction is a key and understudied area of book history. The centralized locale for all of my lukewarm takes is my research masterpost. 

I also reblog things related to libraries, library access, library history, and anti-racism and decolonization of heritage institutions. 

I go through Tumblr ruts where I will reblog a lot of memes about fandom and fanfiction in general, especially memes that are about lavishing fic writers and fan products with praise, because 

the memes are important and true,

fan producers and affirmation are the backbone of fandom culture, and

sometimes I struggle to come up with and write down my ideas.

basically: I’m a full-time MLS student and I have a part-time job, so the blog is buttressed by memes. Thanks for being patient as I put out original thoughts (though I would and have argued that nothing is really original and that’s a good thing...)

I know the title is a little crazy, but please hear me out! This might be a little difficult to understand if you aren't familiar with both stories/universes. Hopefully I can make you guys understand through my explanations. This is going to be a long one, so buckle in. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. 

The Alienist:

Dr. Laszlo Kreizler is an Alienist/psychologist. He specializes in the minds of children, but he also helps select adults as well. The Kreizler institute is a place for wayward boys and girls can be helped with their mental illnesses/mental health. Most of the children however have seeked refuge in the institute as an escape from abusive parents and family members.

Laszlo himself was beaten and abused by his father as well as his sister (whom he is no longer close with. She also lives in England). Both of their parents treated them poorly, and I like to think that's part of the reason why his focus became children.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Piculiar Children:

[These stories/books are fantasy driven, just so you all know]

Piculiar has another meaning in these particular stories. In this case, it means that anyone with a strange or unusual talent/ability is considered piculiar. For example: being invisible, having super human strength, the ability to bring the dead back to life, etc.

There is an organization who call themselves ymbrynes, and they're all females. It is said that men cannot have the same powers as a ymbryne, such as manipulating time. The main job or duty of a ymbryne is to protect and care for piculiar children. Most piculiars live in what is called a Time Loop, which is a safe place ymbrynes create to keep monsters and bad people at bay (Normals can't enter time loops).

Ymbrynes have another power that male siblings of ymbrynes can inherit, which is the ability to turn into a bird at will. However if one is injured in human form then he or she can't turn into bird form and vice versa.

My Theory:

I think that Laszlo's sister is a ymbryne and he inherited the ability to turn into a bird. A Starling to be exact. But their father loathed the fact that his wife had given birth to two peculiar children. He mentally and physically abused his children regularly, but his daughter soon gave up and pretended she wasn't peculiar. But Laszlo refused to repress his piculiar ability. So his father broke his arm and made sure it would never heal properly, so he could never turn into a bird again.

The reason Laszlo and his sister are no longer close is because the abuse his sister recived made her believe that it was wrong to be peculiar, and so she sought out to have a normal life. Laszlo was upset with her for turning her back on her duty to care and protect children, so he decided to care for children instead. He didn't want what had befallen him as a child to happen to anyone else.

I haven’t even consumed any of those parts of the Doctor Who EU, but I follow a fair number of folks who do, and the Tumblr content I see is excellent. Y'all gush about these DW EU stories. You write good meta and funny imagines and vignettes, and you create wonderful fan art.

There are, as we all know, quite a few corners of the DW fandom that seem mostly to feed on hating other bits of DW/fans of said bits (like bad neighborhoods, I try to navigate around them). But not the Gallifrey and Faction Paradox fandoms.

Y'all just genuinely seem to be having such a good time loving these stories and characters. Like I said, I haven’t heard/read any of the Gallifrey or Faction Paradox media, but because of the Tumblr fandom, I feel like I know a lot about them anyway.

I feel protective of Narvin, and alternately want to punch Braxiatel or grin foolishly at him (maybe both at once). I already adored Romana and Leela from the classic series, but seeing the Gallifrey fandom posts about them makes me love them more.

I wrote in a different post a little about how I feel about Faction Paradox. Seriously, the version of Faction Paradox that I have in my head thanks to FP fandom amazes and impresses and slightly terrifies me (but in a good way).

Best of all, you’re all so eager to help newbies join your fandoms! Like, the Gallifrey audios are pretty niche, and Faction Paradox is probably one of the most obscure bits of the DW EU, and thus one might expect your fandoms to be among the most militant gatekeepers in all of DW fandom. But no–you’re positively evangelical!

i am on the side of us collectively speaking out against her transphobia but it’s important to note that it was heralded by her other unsavoury behaviour and similarly, i’m amongst the ranks of fans who tried to bring that stuff into the conversation many, many years before we got to this point. 

asian fans spoke out against the tokenism of cho chang and the patil sisters. gay people questioned the convenience of her announcement re: dumbledore’s sexuality. when jewish people said plainly that having the bankers of the hp world be actual goblins was a disturbing parallel to how jews are portrayed in antisemitic propaganda, they were told that actually jkr had based the persecution of ‘muggle borns’ by the ‘pureblood’ authority on nazi germany so shouldn’t they be grateful for that and furthermore wasn’t that reading a bit too much into the whole thing? 

there’s always been that fan who loves the thing just as much as everyone else, enough to point out the people that the thing and the fandom around the thing is attacking or leaving behind and that fan is almost always shouted down or here on tumblr or vagued about disparagingly etc. now, i’ve chosen to curate my internet feed/s enough so that i never have to see a potterhead publicly potterheading in my space, but what i do still encounter a lot from allies is “man i can’t believe the woman who wrote the progressive and beloved harry potter series turned out to be a TERF :(” 

i could go on about how TERF-ism and white supremacy are linked but this post isn’t about that. this post is about how the signs were definitely there. i don’t think i could’ve predicted what a massive fucking transphobe JKR turned out to be but in retrospect, considering her borderline-to-outright racism and antisemitism (and likely other -isms) and her reactions to even general criticisms of her work like... i definitely think the fandom being similarly unwilling to hear such criticisms has resulted in a lot of the incredulousness around her recent coming-out as being a powerful member of the far right celebrity elite. it’s a coming-out because she’s likely held these positions for a long time, she’s just comfortable stating them out in the open now because the far-right has identified and is marketing trans people, specifically transwomen, as a scapegoat for all of society’s current problems, same as it ever was. 

people and fans of hp were pointing out those early signs as they occurred but here we are anyway. it still happens. you’re entitled to have your gut-feeling about someone who is being critical about a thing you love (which is usually a thing that they also love) but later when you’ve calmed down think about where that gut feeling actually comes from.