#maeverant

Fandom fun is directly proportionate to how you curate your dash and whether or not you seek out drama, honestly. Personally, I enjoy a good hate read, but I don't usually comment unless I am or one of my mutuals is mentioned in the conversation.

The issue isn't him having partner, it's how invested people become in said partner and the relationship overall.

Like, I love Tom, I think he's hot as fuck, I like Zawe, think they're a great couple, and good on them for finding happiness. I don't, however, have any interest whatsoever in their relationship. I don't need to know if they're planning a wedding, what they're naming their children, where their country house is, and so forth. I never pause to imagine what their life together is like...what they're having for dinner, how the baby's room is decorated, what they're doing for the holidays, yada yada yada.

And this is where the Fandom Problem begins.

I am physically and mentally attracted to public persona Tom, and some of the characters he portrays. It's a fantasy for me, purely fictional. A parasocial relationship that brings me joy, and I can recognize that it's not reality. The lines are never blurred for me. So I say things like 'oh my god I want to push him down and ride him like a pony' or 'will that chair hold our combined weight?' in reference to a FANTASY. Real Tom is someone I don't know and never will know, and, honestly, I don't WANT to know.

The folks who are incredibly over-invested in Tom's relationship aren't like that. They may have a fantasy, but it revolves around Real Tom and what Real Tom is actually doing, especially things that they aren't privy to. That fantasy may involve their imagining that they are Tom's actual partner, or simply be voyeuristic, a fly on the wall watching Tom interact with his partner and family. That's how their parasocial relationship works...they live vicariously through his actions. That's why they scour social media for likes and follows and pics, to find out MORE. Where it really goes wrong is the sexual fantasy component...it makes them terribly uncomfortable that we're out here talking about fucking him, because their focus is Real Actual Tom and he has a Real Actual Partner and HOW DARE WE.

This divide will not be bridged, and things are never going to change, because the parasocial relationship constructs of these groups are diametrically opposed.

The Real Tom folks feel a compulsion to defend and protect him at every turn even though they regularly attempt to invade his privacy, seethe over even the slightest negative comment, and send some massively fucked up anon hate to people who post such content or 'objectify' Tom. Surely, he appreciates that, right? :P

If you're a Fantasy Tom person, you don't give a fuck about any of that because this isn't REAL for you. It's a FANTASY. You're here to bathe in his hotness, expound how sexy intelligence and British accents are, and marvel in his talent. And you're having such a good time doing that and chilling with your mutuals on Tumblr that you don't even think about those folks, until someone sends you screenshots of them talking shit about you on their blog, and then you have a chuckle and gleefully point out their hypocrisy.

Saw this floating around but didn't want to pile on OP's or anyone else's posts, thus I created my own.

<rant>

I have SO much to say about this insanity, but the main takeaway is how the fuck do people manage to read and write and EXIST without being able to discern FICTION from REALITY? Seriously.

OC = Original Character. CHARACTER. By fucking definition:

"a person in a novel, play, or movie."

AKA, NOT REAL. They do not exist in the physical realm, only in the imaginations of the writer and the reader. They can be portrayed in visual media by a human being who does exist in the physical realm when the writer's story is translated into a script, but the characters themselves are STILL NOT REAL. They DO NOT EXIST.

The characters are a fiction, their stories and all the details therein are a fiction. Their joy is not real. Their pain is not real. You may empathize with a character's feelings or share in their experiences vicariously, WHICH IS PART OF THE FUCKING POINT OF READING OR WATCHING A MOVIE/TV, but none of it is ACTUALLY HAPPENING, neither to YOU or the CHARACTER.

Do you hang around bookstores or libraries, quietly lying in wait for the moment when someone takes something off the shelf that you think is problematic, then proceed to tell them ‘you shouldn’t! you mustn't!’ and berate them for their poor choices?

Do you lurk in the lobbies of movie theaters, ready to pounce on those exiting a film you don’t approve of with a barrage of ‘this is bad, here’s why, and you should be ashamed that you watched it and gave the production company money’?

When you hear someone discussing a book, film, or TV series you take issue with, do you inject yourself into the conversation and proceed to list all the reasons why they should boycott that particular piece of media, the final one being the classic ‘think of the children!’?

If you see someone out in public wearing an item of clothing with text or images from a book, film, or TV series you’ve deemed harmful, do you march up to them and let them know that what they’re wearing might negatively affect someone?

What’s that? You DON’T do those things? You’ve chosen to NOT interact in such a fashion with complete strangers offline?

“Swift adds that reputation ended up turning into a split album, with one side featuring weaponized songs about vengeance, and the other exploring love and looking to find “something sacred throughout all the battle cries.” Sounds like the recipe for an epic, Westerosi-style plot.

“These songs were half based on what I was going through, but seeing them through a Game of Thrones filter,” Swift says. “‘Look What You Made Me Do’ is literally Arya Stark’s kill list. ‘King of My Heart’ was influenced by Khal Drogo and Daenerys. It’s even got this post-hook of drums — I wanted them to sound like Dothraki drums.” She also wrote lines based on plots from season 7 right before the record dropped. “‘I Did Something Bad’ I wrote after Arya and Sansa conspire to kill Littlefinger,” she says. That and “Look What You Made Me Do,” she adds, “are very Cersei vibes, too. Daenerys as well.”

When I first saw this earlier I was like...is this real? It can’t be real. But it’s real and...wow. Sure, having another mega-rich celebrity pull receipts and prove you’re lying about at least one interaction and calling you a snake on social media is right on level with Arya Stark’s experiences and necessitates a ‘kill’ list. The very concept of LWYMMD is playing the victim, transferring the responsibility of one’s own actions to another in order to justify said actions, which is not at all in line with Arya’s character and then there’s the rest of that garbage up there...

If you’ve read YLM, you may have taken note of Maude’s preference for Jeep Wranglers. That bit of the story is a projection of my own feelings for Jeep Wranglers. When I was small, it was my Dream Vehicle. In my twenties, I obtained the Dream Vehicle. I drove the Dream Vehicle for a decade, until I was six months pregnant with my first and only child, at which point Dream Vehicle was deemed no longer road worthy by the powers that be, aka a State Inspection Station.

I cried. I screeched. I gnashed my teeth.

But in the end, a four door sedan was purchased as a replacement for Dream Vehicle. A four door sedan. With doors and a roof that did not come off. And a trunk. A FUCKING TRUNK. THE HORROR.

We remain a four door sedan family, but once the child possesses a vehicle and the current four door sedan needs replacing, I will be in search of Dream Vehicle Redux...another Jeep Wrangler. Because for the past decade and a half since the original one and I parted ways, every time I see a Jeep Wrangler I REMEMBER and I say to whomever has the misfortune of travelling within the confines of the four door sedan with me, WHEN THIS DIES WE’RE GETTING ONE I DON’T CARE HOW, WE ARE AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME WITH YOUR WHINING ABOUT THE BUMPY RIDE AND THE PRICEY TIRES AND HOW MUCH YOU HATE THE IDEA OF CLIMBING IN THE BACK AND NOT HAVING A TRUNK I REFUSE TO EXIT THIS WORLD WITHOUT OWNING ANOTHER JEEP WRANGLER. Clearly, this is a hill I will absolutely die on.

Today, this ad appeared on my dash:

I thought it was a joke. I really did. IT. IS. NOT.

Me:

Me after kinda-sorta coming to terms with the fact that it’s a Jeep Truck and perhaps useful to some:

If you feel the need to slap a ‘big fat trigger warning’ on a post that links to an article because it contains a still from Infinity War that depicts Thanos choking Loki, this is NOT the blog for you. Seriously.

LOKI IS A FICTIONAL/MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTER.

LOKI, MUCH TO MY DISMAY, IS NOT REAL.

A trigger warning? A BIG FAT TRIGGER WARNING? For a fictional character in a fictional scene with another fictional character in a fictional film?