#yappin

i think it's uncomfortable, but often necessary to recognize when we're watching a show or a film or reading a book or playing a video game with different expectations or desires than the story ever promised to fulfill. simply, you can't draw blood from a stone, you know? and I think this idea, however simple, is often very easy to forget when you're in fandom because fanworks are innately transformative. in fandom, we draw blood from stones all the time. we re-imagine characters, relationships, universes in whichever way we deem fit so that we can experience wish fulfillment. but as the fourth wall between fandom and the creatives behind media becomes thinner and thinner, the boundary between what is the job of storytellers (to tell a story), what is the job of the audience (to receive the story or opt out), and what is the job of fandom (to connect with one another over shared imaginative and transformative reception of the story being told) is getting muddied to detrimental effect. coupled with the rise of hyper-individualism and the increasing commodification of fanworks into traditionally published forms, this is where we get a real wave of entitlement from fandom -- this sense that the storyteller owes something to us by virtue of our fannish devotion and that perceived failure to meet our desires is worthy of a host of outrage and abuses. i think this is where paratext comes in and why the notion of what is or isn't canon feels perhaps more debatable now than ever before. i think it's born from a blend of hyper-individualism effecting how we think and behave as audience members, the increasing sense of entitlement that is borne out of such individualist thinking, the vanishing of the fourth wall between fandom and the mainstream as well as the creators of media that fandom enjoys, and a growing inability to accept the story you're being told on its own terms (and go happily and exclusively to fandom to remedy the urge for something more). because, really, what paratext offers is a sense of legitimacy -- usually when it conveniently upholds what you privately wanted in the first place. if the show you love isn't giving you enough to substantiate your ship, you can get your fix through an actor's interviews, their exposure to fanfiction and fan art, and their perceived approval of the ship. their opinion, by virtue of their literal proximity to the show, legitimizes your own. if the movie you love doesn't do enough with a character you find interesting, a scrapped plan for what the character might've done or a deleted scene might do the same. etc etc.

His villain journey subverts the moment in the hero's journey where the hero refuses the call to adventure. He was proactively digging deeper into the magical and mysterious and forbidden. Everyone in their right mind wanted him not to go on his quest. He did it anyway. He discovered supernatural beings were real and immediately robbed them, and used that as a springboard to rob them a second time. Incredible.