#fandom on fandom

I want your constructive criticism. (In general!)

I say this because of something I’ve noticed over the past few years - I feel that the fanfiction community has gravitated so thoroughly towards positive, encouraging feedback (which is great, don't get me wrong) that I don’t see much constructive criticism around these days. I don’t wanna start a whole Ted talk, but kind constructive criticism (key word: kind) is immensely helpful to artists, and I’d love to encourage frank and open discussion of works in my little corner of the fandom. (Obligatory disclaimer: please still be nice to people, including me, okay? Kind constructive criticism isn’t the same as unmitigated roasting lmao.) My motto is, if you’re kind and polite, it’ll turn out alright!

Personally, lately I’ve been wondering about any inconsistencies with my writing of Korea and Korean characters, since I’m unfortunately American. So if anyone is familiar with Korean culture and notices an oopsie of mine, I’d love to know how I can improve. 💛 (Of course, I'd take constructive criticism on any other aspect of my works you have thoughts about, as well. That's just something I've been thinking about lately.)

Frankly, I also feel that I've developed a bit of an ego around my writing and that my ego could probably use a few more areas of improvement pointed out here and there so she doesn't get too big LMAO.

So i came across this absolute gem.

“There’s no way to know how they’d act as adults”

… honey

Sweetheart

Darling.

Have you never heard of extrapolation, logic, drawing from personal experience, and fiction?

“You’re just putting child personalities on adults”

…. No?? I’ve literally never seen that. Aged up means they’re older. Their personalities develop and change. “But we don’t know what they’re like as adults!” That’s why we extrapolate dear, it’s fiction. It’s ALL made up.

This mindset shows such a complete lack of intelligence and imagination, not to mention, like… how fiction works.

tagged by @hichie to do this. thank m’love. you made me think about stuff. well done.

here’s the link to the tier-maker (i only just realised the watermark blocks some of the top tier - how stupid)

Essentially: don't reward the behavior. Don't feed the fire. Ranting in someone's inbox is unproductive, usually inappropriate, and probably won't achieve anything. So don't give them what they want. They want you to get upset and to try to defend yourself. They want you to argue your side of the case. They want you to spend your time and energy engaging with THEIR problems so that they don't have to. Don't. Don't publish their hate or their thought-vomit. If you respond, tell them straight up "this is an inappropriate forum for those woes, and I won't be giving you my energy today. Consider taking this to a trusted friend or professional." And if they continue to harass you, make fun of them until they fuck off, then block.

In this way, not only do you shut down their efforts and protect your own energy and time, but you also set a precedent and model better behavior and better boundaries for the people watching. When we respond to angry anons by trying to defend ourselves and over-explain our every statement, we're just teaching the other people on the internet that angry anons is how you get attention. When we tell them, "that's inappropriate and I won't be responding to that," we teach the people around us to have firmer boundaries and that yelling won't get them what they want.

It's like dealing with children. Remember: we are all children. Even when we get big and learn a thing or two, we're still a child of this earth and of our community, and we should conduct ourselves as such. We are all deeply, intimately affected by each other. We're social little monkeys. Act the way you want others to act, and you'll see the ripple.

Even if someone has a grievance that's personally valid (to themselves), VERY VERY often, they're directing that grievance to the wrong person. Like, let's use yesterday as an example - that anon sent me paragraph upon paragraph about their past relationships and how they've been burned, because they didn't like a post I made about open relationships. That kind of venting would have been much better directed at a professional therapist, or a trusted friend or family member of theirs. Sending it to me is useless.

Further, I feel that there's an overall culture of rage bait online - even if the sender doesn't REALIZE they're making rage bait. I feel that there's a strong trend online of people "keeping each other in check." When we see something we don't agree with, there's a sort of expectation that we "speak up" about it. We feel a sort of weird responsibility to go and MAKE SURE that the OP gets told off, or that they know they're "wrong." And honestly? Most of the time it's a complete waste of time.

I'm not saying that rhetoric is always unproductive, and obviously our current society comes with MANY pitfalls, lies, and illusions, many of them intentionally cultivated by propaganda. It's important to talk to each other and to check ourselves. And obviously, if it's a situation like someone saying "yo bro that's actually a slur fyi," or like, "hey maybe research this artist you've been reblogging, they're pretty grossly sexist," or something like that, sure. Take the feedback into consideration. Do a little research.

But.

Repeat after me.

YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF TO ANYONE.

YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO DEFEND AND EXPLAIN YOUR EVERY STATEMENT.

EXPECTING PEOPLE TO DEFEND AND EXPLAIN THEIR EVERY STATEMENT TO YOU IS RIDICULOUS AND A WASTE OF EVERYONE'S TIME.

Pouring your heart out about your trauma to a random blogger because they said something you're uncomfy with is unproductive, immature, and inappropriate.

This kind of behavior is pretty dangerously close to codependency.

Take care of yourself on the internet, folks. It's a weird world in here. Remember that we're all humans, and that humans don't owe you shit except basic respect and decency. No one owes you any kind of explanation, and you owe no one any explanations either.

Try to be kind and decent to each other, but don't give pieces of yourself away to any old anon who comes your way yelling.

Oh sweetheart, I don't give a fuck what's "canon" and what's not.

The internet went wrong when people started equating "canon" with "valid."

I ship characters based off of their history, chemistry, and their bond. All of which Mike and El have none, btw, if you wanna talk about canon. :)

Whether characters get into a relationship in the course of a show/movie/whatever is a moot point to me. I don't ship characters because I want to harass the creators into doing what I want them to. I ship characters because of their romantic chemistry.

I’ve never heard that phrase used before. No, I wouldn’t sort myself into that particular camp. However, I think the internet gets WAY too polarized about these things. Should people be romanticizing abuse or abusive relationships of any type? No, absolutely not. Ive always believed that fiction has a huge impact on reality (I’ve made posts about it before, but I’m on mobile rn so I’m too lazy to go find and link them), and the more people romanticize abuse in fiction, the more socially accepted it’s gonna become in real life. (See: all the studies about some of the the horrific effects of violent porn.)

However, I think the internet has somewhat lost its ability to differentiate between portraying something in order to explore or reflect upon a dark topic, and romanticizing or condoning that thing. Note how I said up there that people absolutely should not romanticize abuse. But if nobody ever made any kind of art or fiction that portrayed abuse, or any other kind of evil, how would we as individuals and as a society ever process, understand, or make progress? If we Disney-fy and bowdlerize every single thing, we will be an emotionally, morally, and philosophically stunted people.

I was actually just talking about this with a friend, perhaps I put it better there:

“Plus, people have this really weird assumption that portraying something in art in the same thing as.... doing it in actual real life? Which is absolutely ridiculous, not to mention damaging, because art and fiction have always been so much about exploring themes and thoughts and whatnot, and if you say "you must ONLY EVER explore MORALLY PURE things in fiction and never stray into dark or immoral subject matter!!!" ... that limits human thought and philosophy and morality SO MUCH.”

So, to address your ask:

“any ship is okay” nah, not exactly. I don’t support condoning, encouraging, or romanticizing abuse. (And to reference the post that started this, which I might link later when I’m not on mobile, “abuse” here of COURSE includes child abuse.) However, the internet really has to learn that portraying something is not tantamount to supporting or condoning it. If we were only ever allowed to make art about the things we supported or actually partook in, Agatha Christie would be the most accomplished serial killer of all time.

“There should be no fandom police” Actually yeah, I agree. Discussion board moderators and the like, for self contained fandom communities where there are built in guidelines? Yeah, sure. But fandom is a Wild West of art, fiction, and self expression. It’s a sandbox, as people have often described it. I’ll reference that earlier post again and say that if a fan feels that they need their hand held online, and they can’t blacklist tags, block content they don’t want to see, and manage their own fandom experience, then they’re probably too young to be unsupervised online. Again: this is not saying that “oh nazis are allowed to exist, just block them! :)” no. Obviously that’s different. But I think “fandom police” are entirely unnecessary. In my experience, such “police” operate very much like police in the real world: they don’t really make anything safer, they just harass people who are minding their own business.

Also, I don’t think people need “fandom police” to tell them what’s right or wrong. That’s just... I don’t want to be mean here, but that’s ridiculous. For one thing, if a fan genuinely needs a random internet stranger to come in and tell them “that’s morally wrong” in order to navigate morality, that fan is WAY too young to be unsupervised on the internet. For another thing, the idea that somebody (or multiple somebodies) should be tasked with going around decreeing moral value on various fandom trends and topics is just plain impractical. Who’s to say that person or those people are pure bastions of morality? It just doesn’t work that way.

Now, should people have constructive conversations about morality and ethics and philosophy, in and out of a fandom setting? Yes. Duh. That’s the only way human beings made it past the Paleolithic era as a species. And (again, because I feel like people are going to willfully misinterpret this), I’m not saying “oh absolutely any kind of behavior and any message and anything is fine because we all have different opinions uwu.” See the first paragraph. Punch Nazis, eat the rich, and spit in the face of racists, homophobes, and misogynists.

I’ll quote my conversation with a friend again because I feel like it really wraps up my thoughts here:

“Yeah the internet has really ruined the term "problematic." Nazis are problematic. Writing about nazis to explore themes of morality isn't problematic, it's a reflection on and exploration of morality and history. And people don't seem to be able to see the difference between those two things”