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nightshadehoney · 6 months

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I never watched James Somerton's shitty Killing Stalking video because I was trying to be good to myself and avoid something that I knew would make me very angry. In fact, I never watched any of his stuff because the fact that he made a video like that was enough to discount any thing he ever had to say (also I heard about the Celluloid Closet plagiarism).

But man, is the James Somerton discourse bringing a lot of Killing Stalking-related feelings back up for me. Because I'm mad; I'm still so mad. There are a suprising amount of people on social media who are saying they never watched any of his stuff except for the Killing Stalking video. I'm annoyed not just to find out that the vid had that sort of reach and influence, but also because Somerton's unmasking hasn't seemed to make people reasses the validity of the kind of thing he was saying. People are just now being like "hmm I think this guy might have Issues With Women" but that doesn't warrant any reflection on what exactly the motivation is of people who complain about women enjoying a niche webcomic? Because I don't actually believe you're concerned about the influence of some obscure piece of media when you advertise its existence to your large audience many of whom had not heard of it and would never have heard of it but for your transparent outrage porn video. It's rage bait and the target was women that are perceived as straight. A big channel has publicized the fact that they excised a section that endorsed the opinions in this video from their own because they became aware of Somerton's plagiarism and dishonesty (presumably; if it was actually because they recognized his views were coming from a sexist place I would welcome a clarification). And you know, I don't think that's a good look actually. That you needed to be told he was a bad person and couldn't idependently put together that the misogynist man was saying misogynist things.

The comic ended years ago and the fandom has gone mostly quiet, but to this day people are still the peddling the"fujoshi/stupid teenage girls who don't know what's good for them are shipping these characters because they are too braindead to realize it's not a romance; it's a horror, two things I believe are mutually exclusive. I am smarter than all of these cringe degenerates" bullshit. It's in the comments of the hbomberguy video even; one comment was such a gross misrepresentation of the series that my friend needed to talk me down from getting into a pointless youtube comments argument (bless him) because these people are officially making me lose my marbles.

This narrative is full of shit, it's demonstrably not fucking true. You can go on the artist's twitter right now and its full of her retweeting shippy fanart of that pairing readers were apparently never intended to ship.

(I don't think Koogi knows or cares about James Somerton; she just reblogs the works of fans who tag her. This made me laugh though).

Now this is all speculation because he died decades before social media existed, but I think if Nabokov was alive today his twitter would not be full of Humbert Humbert x Dolores Haze fanart. And yet, I have unironically seen people compare shipping Sangwoo and Bum in Killing Stalking with the misreading of Lolita as a precocious sexual temptress more than once.

And this isn't me saying that Killing Stalking is the disgusting"pro-sexualized abuse" comic that tumblr purity police used to characterize it as either. One of these days I'm going to go truly bonkers and end up banging pots and pans on the street corner, yelling at random innocent passerbys about how stories about romantic and sexual relationships are not required to be Hallmark movies. You can make art about the negative, dark, and troubling parts of these feelings and relationships without creating a pat morality tale. You don't need to approach media analysis like your 7th grade teacher has assigned you an essay on explaining what a novel's "message" is.

Nobody, not the author and not the fans, genuinely thinks that Sangwoo and Bum have a healthy or aspirational relationship. This hypothetical person that does not understand the relationship is toxic doesn't exist. Because girls and women, even the ones having cringey fandom fun on tiktok or whatever, are not so stupid and naive that they are unware that breaking someone's legs and locking them in a muder basement is bad. The type of concern troll rhetoric Somerton employed in his video is directed near exclusively at women interested in men and there's a reason for this. Women are not responsible for abuse that men do to them; nobody is responsible for their partner abusing them. If I never saw people spit this bullshit again it would be too soon.

#this is not usually the kind of post I make here because I really try to make this tumblr a positive mental space for me but ffs #james somerton #killing stalking

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gold-rhine · 10 months

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You ever think the Itto we get in events isn't the Itto from his story quest? Little things that feel real ooc like him stealing from his friends or that dumb drum. The only time after that I felt This Is Itto was during Heizou's hangout. Godteir hangout btw. I love him to bits but man does it hurt a little. They're also missing a golden opportunity with his blue oni bro that doesn't exist anymore I guess.

oh 100%, i am so salty about Itto writing. I think that like, no joke he is one of the hardest characters in genshin to handle writing wise, bc while outwardly comedic and goofy, he is also incredibly kind and empathetic AND has an unbreakable spine when it comes to protecting people. He has tragic backstory! He has themes about minority in-fighting, refusing to assimilate and radical compassion! He's a hard balance to keep, and he was written incredibly in his own story quest, but I feel like when random hoyo writers who mb don't have a tight understanding of his character write him, they just do the comedic bit or fail to write him as multi-dimensional even when trying

like on my prev blog I was ranting at length how hoyo fucked up Itto's writing in chasm event. And I recently replayed it and like... you can SEE how they tried and failed! You can SEE how some writer had the characterization notes for Itto, but just couldn't make him come to life. like they OOC-ed him into a clown for most the quest, then they had a bit where he steps up during xiao and yelan's argument about how xiao wants to sacrifice himself, but instead of arguing against self-sacrifice, smth that he did VERY coherently in his own story quest, he just punches the wall and passes out. And then kuki explains that like Itto hates seeing ppl harm themselves, and that he has his heroic moments to help others and like. why IS SHE TELLING THIS. Why didn't you just SHOW us with Itto's own words and actions?? Like you can see them reading character notes and failing to dramatize them. Such a shame for real.

tho speaking of events, i think the ghosts event where he immediately adopted three yokai kids was good

but also yeah, Heizou hangout was absolutely top tier, and Itto was on point and absolute joy every second he was on screen. I miss him too, when will Good Itto Characterization come back from the war

#rhine talks #arataki itto

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ghostintheheadset · 1 month

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So I picked up a short story anthology recently, which I don't normally do, and I thought it'd be fun to go through and do little reviews of each piece. I've always been a longform fiction girlie and it couldn't hurt to look a little closer and see what makes shorter fiction work.

The anthology is Someone in Time, containing stories about time travel romance, here's the 4 that I read today:

1: Roadside Attraction, by Alix Harrow

The Time Travel: A strange rock in the woods that sends you to some random time and place in the past, then eventually back to the present. Or not.

The Romance: Floyd, a young man recently broken up with, and Edmund, the groundskeeper.

I think this was a good choice to have as the first piece, because as far as time travel stories go, it's pretty straightforward. "Young man goes out into the world seeking adventure, and is still left wanting, because he doesn't realize that what he's looking for is right in front of him", but with time travel. Notably, his adventures in the past are largely glossed over, most of them being described in a sentence or less, which is to the benefit of the piece's theming. Floyd's characterized as a man looking for adventure and never finding what he needs, so those adventures being summed up as "two hours he spent swearing and almost dying", "he made out with a pirate", "he spent a week hungry" adds to that vibe.

His arc is, as an extent of this, very predictable. He spends months traveling to different time periods looking for some grand destiny, and at the end of the story, he'll realize "oh actually, I'm gay for the groundskeeper that's always here to greet me when I come home, and living in the present is all I need, actually." I don't find that to the story's detriment, though, it is a romance- it doesn't matter if you figure out the destination early.

I'm not handing out stars or rating these out of ten or anything. I liked it.

2: The Past Life Reconstruction Service, by Zen Cho

The Time Travel: A service that lets people experience half-hour snippets of past lives.

The Romance: Rui, a washed-up film director, and Yiu Leung, his ex and soulmate.

I may be a little guilty of "rating" this higher than I maybe should, simply because I like the concept of past lives in fiction a lot. Rui looks into the past five times, and each time he recognizes Yiu Leung as an important person to him, rubbing salt in the wound of their recent breakup. Soulmates can be a little hit-or-miss for me, so I appreciate that Rui doesn't try to make amends with Yiu Leung just because their soulmates, but because he sees how important Yiu Leung has been in his past lives, and the repeated encounters make him realize "oh, I fucked this up bad and I want to make amends".

Much like Roadside Attraction, the time travel functions as less of a plot element and more of a narrative tool to help the main character learn the lesson they need to learn. Plotwise there wasn't too too much going on, we learn about the fight between Rui and Yiu Leung that caused them to breakup, and Rui encounters him at the end and makes the effort to get back together. Big chunks of the text are spent in past lives, but fortunately, I found them pretty interesting. It starts with the good old "angst-filled wartime setting", but then moves on to "Rui and Yiu Leung are both women married to the same nobleman carrying out and illicit romance", and later, "Rui is a cow and Yiu Leung is a fly who won't leave him alone". Honestly that one bit is kinda carrying for me, it was very short but I'm going to be thinking about that one for a while.

3: First Aid, by Seanan McGuire

The Time Travel: An early 22nd century agency that sends people back in time to better study overlooked aspects of various time periods, to then send their observations back the long way. Operatives spend years learning about the time period they're going to live in, getting reconstructive surgery to better learn the part, and as they can't be compensated the agency instead provides for one person of their choosing for life.

The Romance: Taylor, a researcher going back to the past, and Marianne, a woman from the 90s she falls in love with.

"Hey ghost, why'd you spend so much more time describing the time travel here" because that's what reading the story's like. Marianne isn't introduced until 2/3rds of the way through the story, and so much more time is spent on explaining the circumstances and purposes of Taylor going back in time. And it's not that these things aren't interesting, but it leads to the story being so unbalanced that the romance feels barely there in comparison. If the story had opened on Taylor landing in the past, and meeting Marianne soon after, and her backstory had been explored through comparisons between her past future life and her present past life, that could've led for so much more time for Taylor and Marianne's relationship to develop.

The best way I can summarize it is that First Aid so badly wants to be a novella at least, and can't properly fold itself into the constraints of a short story. The funny twist near the end is that Taylor's supposed to go to the 1500s, and instead lands at a ren faire in 1996 with no way home. In a longer story, the repercussions of this could be properly explored, but instead, we have Taylor internally panicking about both the immediate and long-term repercussions, but the former are skipped over and the story ends before the latter can become relevant. For the purposes of the short, this didn't need to happen- if Taylor landed in the 1500s and met a woman there, the overall plot would be unchanged, and there'd be much more time for her relationship with Marianne to feel like a relationship.

4. I Remember Satellites, by Sarah Gailey

The Time Travel: A time travel agent goes to the past on a lifelong mission to alter the course of history by marrying a prince and keeping him from the throne.

The Romance: Violet, a time agent, and Dani, another agent sent on an overlapping mission.

First point, why was this immediately after First Aid lmao, if you have two "woman working for a time travel org goes back in time to spend the rest of her life there and falls in love with another woman there" stories, space them out a bit!

Of the four I read so far, I think this one did the best job of integrating time travel, making it deeply necessary to the plot and character arcs without it overstepping. Violet, leaving to spend the rest of her life with a man who sucks, struggles with having to forget her life in the future and being forgotten by the people she knew. She and Dani aren't supposed to be in the same place at the same time, interacting with other agents on missions is expressly forbidden due to the likelihood of operatives breaking character when they're not completely immersed, but naturally she holds on to Dani both as a lover and as the only tangible reminder of the life she used to live.

As such, the story takes two routes towards being a forbidden romance- which is to its benefit, because as Violet points out, it's not as if her bosses can punish her when she's already on a mission that's going take up the rest of her life. While that is initially a compelling reason for Dani, I as a reader was more open to Violet's perspective, but the fact that she was married to a shitty prince helped keep the appeal of a forbidden romance going despite that. While I'm not expecting a full capital-R Romance from short stories like these, this was the closest to it in the collection so far, and I felt Dani played a larger role in the story than most of the other love interests (though Edmund is also a contender!). I'd say this is my favorite in the anthology so far, though there's certainly plenty more to go.

#book reviews #books #romance review #time travel #queer lit #Someone in Time

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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OMG drop the deets on the DOLLHOUSE AU! I watched that show last year and I tried so hard to come up with a fic idea for it but i couldn't ever get it right! Such a cool concept!

(Wip nudge game)

Okay first off YESSS Dollhouse! I love that show. I feel like it’s way too underrated / poorly known. But it’s so good. I love hearing that other people like it too!

So, I had this idea pretty early in my involvement in T100 fandom, like probably when S3 was airing, so it reflects both the canon and my own personal feelings and interests at the time. I did a lot of planning / brainstorming / note taking and I got really into it in my own head; I really enjoyed playing out random scenes as daydreams and stuff, just for fun. Sometimes I still use the universe for daydream fodder, tbh.

Unfortunately, when I tried actually writing it, I didn’t like what I came up with. I don’t know if it’s because the beginning concept isn’t strong or just bad luck or even if the openings I tried are better than I thought, but I wasn’t feeling it. I have two beginnings written but I think if I were to ever try this fic again I’d start again entirely.

Basically the idea was Bellamy as Echo and Clarke as Ballard (but not in the FBI). At the start of the fic, she’s a disgraced med school dropout going through a post-breakup, post-burnout slump. Abby, secretly the head of the LA Dollhouse, tries to break her out of it by sending her off on a fun night out, during which she meets purposefully planted doll Bellamy, who will remind her of the good parts of life again. (That this is an immoral idea bothers me less than that it seems a long shot idea lol--it’s also very hard to write, in part because writing a shippy fic with known characters while simultaneously giving one of them a purposefully fake personality is... a new sort of challenge!)

She does meet Bellamy, she does have a good time with him, but while they’re together, he glitches and remembers, very briefly, who he really is. Then later she sees him disappearing into a mysterious black van. This makes her very suspicious, obviously, and as she and her friends (Wells, Monty, and Jasper) try to figure out what happened, they end up going down the rabbit hole of the whole Dollhouse legend.

Parallel to this is a story line involving Bellamy, going on various engagements and starting to glitch more frequently, etc. Eventually, they’d meet and uh... I don’t know, score some kind of victory one assumes. (I’m not looking at my notes so I don’t remember how much of that I worked out.)

Other stuff I wanted to include:

Raven as Topher... obviously

Miller as a Doll who finishes his term of service during the fic itself; Clarke and co. follow him as he reunites with his husband, Bryan, not aware of what’s going on (this was my favorite scene to imagine in my head for some reason)

Jasper, with his S3 characterization, somehow signs on to be a Doll without telling anyone, then becomes a sleeper agent, dramatically revealed

Octavia as, obviously, Bellamy’s sister, who was also involved with activist work with him (similar backstory to Echo’s in the show) before he was caught by the Dollhouse and is still looking for him

Murphy as an ex-Doll who lives out in the desert (for the Aesthetic mostly) and trolls people on message boards about what he may or may not know.

Obviously this is a multi-chapter fic. I never consolidated all the notes into a proper point-by-point or chapter-by-chapter outline. At some point, I decided I knew the beginning and I was excited to actually write--and then it went so badly I kind of soured on the story. It would be suuuuper ambitious for this point in my t100-fandom life but I still think of it fondly, so I added it to my wip list.

#answers #wip nudg game #dylanobrienisbatman #dollhouse au #this got long whoops

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artkotaro · 4 years

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Curiosities 👀

ENGLISH

More than anything, it is the origin story of my two Aus.

What is the reason that motivated you to make your own Au?

For that, let's start at the beginning of everything.

It's funny since Undertale had gone out of fashion at the time, I really didn't know what the story was about and had the idea that it would be another boring nonsense game.

But in that I dared to investigate what his story is about thanks to a YouTuber (whom I also met through the video game Bendy ant The Ink Machine), and thus my taste for Undertale began.

Then for the Shipps, but that's another story.

After getting to know Undertale better, I thought about delving into Fandom to the point of learning about alternative universes.

How?

Thanks to the Underverse series, there has started my taste for alternative universes.

One day when I was drawing one of the Undertale characters at the time, I came up with the idea of creating my own alternate universe and Reisontale came up.

Reisontale was the first name you thought of for your AU?

If I am honest NO, the truth was it was difficult to think of a name for me AU, since I wanted it to be original and not repeated.

The first one that occurred to me was Gastertale.

But after searching that this AU already existed, I discarded the name and tried to think of another one again.

And why the Reisontale Name?

Well, that has a very clear explanation, by Reison.

Since she created this AU into a dead and destroyed AU.

Where did you get inspiration to make Reison?

In Chara and Friks, in My Little Pony Princess Celestia and Luna (at that time I was still a fan of them) and in the legends of my country of the Origin of Day and Night.

Well, I don't know if you noticed Reison has symbols that represent day and night. And this is more noticeable with the powers it has (which are Light and Darkness).

Why the name of Reison?

I chose a random name, this one is divided in two, Rei for a Sailor Moon character that I really like (Sailor Mars) and Son for my mistake, since I thought it meant Sun in English, but it actually means Son.

And well, I decided to give it a name like that, since I inadvertently made a move with the word smile in Spanish.

What is Reison's past? Will it have a story?

At the moment I will not show anything of Reison's past, nor his history.

But who will have a history if it is so.

I already have it planned from start to finish, but for the moment I will not show it, since I want Reison to continue maintaining that air of mystery that characterizes him.

But I will give basic information about her, such as her birthday and her tastes.

And what about Jackson? (the Sans of Reisontale)

Ahhhhh, I will talk very little about it, since it is not as relevant as Reison and Eight (since they will have a leading role in a project that I have planned that is called Multiverse), but I will include it despite the fact that I will not give it as much importance, it is still my favorite creation (after Reison and eight) 😌.

Did you plan to do Numbertale after Reisontale?

NO, Numbertale was not in my plans, in fact only Reisontale was only planned.

If you didn't have Numbertale planned, then how did the idea come about?

Something that if I don't clarify is that, since I was new to AUS, I thought that each AUS Creator could only create one. So I will settle for having a UA.

What made me change my mind was the Creator of Geno, Error and Fresh.

SHIT !! I create three Aus, with these Sans, with super good stories. (I loved the Aftetale U-U story 👌)

This gave me the motivation to do more than one UA, so the idea to create Numbertale came up.

Why Numbertale?

If I had trouble thinking of a name for my first AU, this was more.

But I will say the origin, since I was bored in math classes I decided to give characters a shape and without thinking I created an Undertale character.

Who was the Papyrus was the first Numbertale character to create after Sans and Friks.

And there's the name of Numbertale.

The numbers on the characters in Numbertale, did you put them on why?

Initially YES, but after delving further into the meaning of each Number by Numerology, I paid more attention to giving a number to each character and somehow fitting it according to its meaning and personality.

If you don't believe me, look up the meaning of 8 and 9, and you will know why I put that number on Sans and Papyrus.

Is Numbertale having its story too?

Of course, I already published the first page of Comic 1, the other pages I have in my sketchbook but I will pass them to Dijital later.

I take this opportunity to say that the story of Numbertale will be divided into 4 Comic, all without losing the course of the story, but it will have 4 protagonists depending on what the comic is called, a clear example is Comic 1 which is called Friks (it means that this Comic will star Friks).

The others would tell them but I do not want to do Spoilers, I put aside that I want it to be a surprise.

What was Eight's first design like?

Ugly

I think so, it wasn't a great design to say since at the time I didn't know how to draw Sans well.

But that if, I had to redesign it 3 times, (the current design is the definitive one).

Did you have a character to get inspired by Eight's design?

Yes, it was six characters, but I was more inspired by Cross Sans and Delta Sans.

At first I planned to make numbertale's universe a kind of world parallel to X-Tale, but dismiss the idea as it wanted to be original.

And apart from the need to know more about the AU as X-Gaster (which I didn't know much about, since I couldn't find the comics of this Spanish-language Sempai Jael, at the time I was finishing the comic like the incredible episodes of Underverse).

Eight's first design had an almost like Cross, but with its differences, I really regret how I used to draw it

As I said earlier, I didn't want it to be a cheap copy of Cross, I had to modify several things to the character such as story, personality and design.

There are some things that your current design retains from the old one.

You may find similitides of Eight's wardrobe with Cross's, it's more of a reference to Jakei's influence on this Au. Other than that Cross is my favorite character.

What story are you going to make first? Numbertale or Reisontale?

Numbertale, since as I mentioned earlier, Reisontale is more related to Reison's story and past.

And I don't want to show any of this yet.

Besides, to better understand Reisontale's story, you have to know Numbertale's as these are related.

Why, I won't say.

You'll find out in The Multiverse Project

Are you going to do something else after you finish Numbertale and Reisontale?

Yep, The Multiverse Project where Reison, Co-Star Eight and The Jackson will be starring, because...

I see what I'm doing with him.

I have other projects, but I still don't know which one to start with first.

I'm not sure I'm going to be encouraged to do the story of my Third AU, called Wizardtale.

But first with the first thing.

•

Well this is all I wanted to say, if you want to continue knowing more or have doubts, encourage to ask me, I do not bite ;3.

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wellknownwolf · 4 years

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I want to move into a new phase in my relationship with fandom, as I mature with new experiences. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like though. What is your take on the parasocial affection inherent in an RPF like Rhett & Link? Or even the deep attachments that can form with fictional characters? Or a desire to emulate fantasy worlds? I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable with all this, it's just that it's been a long time coming, and once I got started I couldn't stop. - Natasha (5)

First, let me post the full question, since it came in 5 parts:

Hey, it's me again. Your 'mystery inquirer', as you so adorably dubbed me. You're right, I had forgotten I'd sent in that ask. Just now, I couldn't help but think about a scene from Life After, as I am wont to on a frightfully regular basis, which is what got me back here. When you said you pondered over my seemingly simple, banal question for a good while, and wrote out a beautifully thoughtful answer like you always do, it made me happy.

Your narrative voice is similar to my own, and it made my chest ache in a certain way to have gotten such a response to what felt like a random shout out into the abyss (though it obviously wasn't, I sent it directly to you, I guess it's more what it felt like taking a chance on a conversation with a random stranger online). And now I'm cringing a bit at how melodramatic all sounds. But I'm committing to it, anyway. That's the beauty of anon, eh?

Wolfie (is it presumptuous to call you that? Please do forgive me the liberty I'm taking), I must admit. I'm quite envious of this community you have with @missingparentheses, @lunar-winterlude, and other wonderful people. Since childhood, I've been head over heels in love with fandom. Not a specific fandom, I've been a traveller through dozens, but fandom in general. I've read probably thousands of fanfics, spent countless hours daydreaming about beloved characters and their stories.

To the point where, in my most recent and worst depressive episode, it may have been for the worse, if I'm honest. Escapism and yearning to the point of impairment, engendering a sense of constant bereavement. But it's taught me so much about life and its wonders, I can't write it off as just some damaging habit. It's such an integral part of who I am, a deeply curious soul (shout out to my Enneagram Type 5-ers out there!). But I don't anyone to share it with, and it can get quite lonely.

.....................................................................

Thank you for giving me so much to respond to, Natasha. Thank you for continuing to reach out. I accidentally wrote something like a paper in response to your thoughtful question. I even conducted a little research and cited a source. ENGLISH TEACHER, ACTIVATE!

Also, for what it’s worth, I feel at times that I communicate exclusively through shouts into the abyss, so it’s a language with which I am at home. In fact, it is this very technique, this experiment with intense vulnerability at the hands of a virtual stranger, that earned me one of my absolutely most-treasured friends: @missingparentheses. I have poured out a great deal of my own melodrama to her, and she has received it and reciprocated it in a way that, three years later, continues to teach me how to be a better friend. In short, I’m a firm believer in diving straight in when it comes to new friends. Cringe not; I’m on board.

So let’s dive.

R&L is really only the second “fandom” with which I’ve been involved. Third, if we count my preteen obsession with ‘N Sync (and considering how much wall space I dedicated to their posters and self-printed photos, we probably should). My point is, while I don’t have much experience with the community facet of fandom, I do relate to your feeling of near-obsession. Or clear obsession.

I know the feeling of escapism you’re describing, and I know the yearning and melancholy that can come on our worst days, where we feel like “real life” will never measure up to the color and brilliance of the worlds we spend so much time considering. These worlds, these characters and their relationships, their challenges, victories, and defeats all seem so purposeful: they’re the plot points we use to craft the stories in our heads (regardless of whether we’re writers at all). It can be much harder to view ourselves as protagonists worth analyzing, viewing and reviewing through new lenses, perhaps because we’re warned against navel-gazing, perhaps because our self-perception just won’t allow for it. Maybe a little of both.

But yes! It teaches us! We DO learn about life, other people, love, risk, all kinds of things through what we consume in these fandoms, so I would never classify it as a “bad” thing. We hone our imaginations and learn to pay attention to our own emotions as we recognize feelings from our favorite shows, games, books, and characters arising in ourselves.

I used to be a little afraid of the fact that I was always telling myself stories, internally imagining myself as someone else, a player in the worlds I often loved more than my own. I suspected that someday, somehow, I would be caught playing pretend all the time in my own little ways. I was a bright and ambitious young woman, so why would I give so much of my mental energy to such frivolous pursuits?

In my first semester of graduate school, though, I learned from a Lit. Theory professor who intimidated the hell out of me that we all do this. We’re all telling ourselves stories all the time, some of which are true and close to objective reality, some of which are more subjective to whatever fantastical (or fandom) material we last consumed. I’ve whispered my own dialogue in the shower, but so have you whispered yours in your head (if not also out loud in your shower!). And through this act, however it is performed, I have made those worlds part of my own. So have you. In this way, they are real, and I no longer feel fearful of being “found out.”

When we have those moments of doubt, though, when we wonder whether we’re going too far, it probably stems, at least partially, from the “us v. them” divide between fandom and mainstream society. We love our little worlds, but we also feel that twinge of anxiety that we might be bordering on obsession, that our guilty pleasure might be discovered and we will be socially punished for it, namely, as Joli Jensen writes in “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” because “the fan is characterized as (at least potentially) an obsessed loner, suffering from a disease of isolation, or a frenzied crowd member, suffering from a disease of contagion. In either case, the fan is seen as being irrational, out of control, and prey to a number of external forces” (13). According the consistent covert (and overt, at times) messages of the mainstream, “[f]andom is conceived of as a chronic attempt to compensate for a perceived personal lack of autonomy, absence of community, incomplete identity, lack of power and lack of recognition” (Jensen 17). Yikes. That doesn’t feel good to admit about ourselves, does it?

Luckily, it’s bullshit.

Treating “fans” as others (outsiders, people who can’t form relationships or find fulfillment in the “real world”) “risks denigrating them in ways that are insulting and absurd” (Jensen 25). Those who take this stance, who see fans as victims of hysteria or desperate loners, do so in order to “develop and defend a self-serving moral landscape. That terrain cultivates in us a dishonorable moral stance of superiority, because it makes other into examples of extrinsic forces, while implying that we [members solely of the mainstream] somehow remain pure, autonomous, ad unafflicted” (Jensen 25). In short, that us/them thinking just makes people feel better about themselves by pointing out an easily-identifiable “other.”

I have also grappled with the concept of parasocial affection, particularly with R&L. I was well into writing my first Rhink fic when the thought crossed my mind, “Oh my god, what if I actually met these people someday? How would I look them in the eye? I’d feel like a crazy person (again)!” From the safety of the Midwest, I laughed off the thought. And then a year or so later, they were announcing their first tour. And I was still writing, here and there, still deep in my affection for them, sometimes wrestling with the thought that I’ve devoted so much energy to people who would never know I exist.

It doesn’t matter that the attachment was in the most obvious, tangible ways only one-sided. As an adult who is ever-learning how to navigate the worlds of her own creation and the ones over which she has far less control, I view my intense attachment to characters both real and fictional with deep fondness. And while I may not receive affection or attention directly from the sources (R&L, fictional characters, sports teams, who/whatever we build fandoms around), I am still earning some very real rewards for my involvement: Because of them, I found my way to a participatory culture in which I was supported and encouraged to express my creativity. This gave me the push and interest that I needed to hone skills that have not only made me a better writer, but also a better teacher and mentor. With fandom comes the ability to immediately strike up a conversation over shared interests. With fandom comes a sense of belonging in what we have proven is an awfully divisive world.

Right now, I’m consuming far less fandom-related material than I did a few years ago. I don’t really watch GMM anymore and I’m on a break from Ear Biscuits (though I still love it), Gotham ended over a year ago and I’m not in the habit of reading fics right now, and I can’t yet play the remade Final Fantasy 7, so that’s out for me, too (though I know I will fall deep into that well once the game is in my hot little hands). This all happened by itself. I never consciously moved away from these sources; I just floated on to other interests and other levels of interest, knowing that if and when I wanted to dig back in, I could always come back.

I used to feel quite sad at the thought of someday “moving on” from these intense interests. I couldn’t fathom somehow falling out of love with those bands, actors, or video games. But for me, the transition into wherever I am now has not been painful in the least. I’m glad I knew the intensity that I did, and I’m happy with the distance I have now. And there’s a good chance I’ll be fanatic about something else someday. I’m looking forward to it!

Here are some responses that I couldn’t organically fit into my essay:

Yes, you can call me Wolfie if you’d like. That name started with @missingparentheses (her second appearance in this answer!), and quickly became a reminder to not take myself too seriously.

Second, I don’t think I know any other Type 5s! I’m a type 8.

Also, here’s my MLA formatted citation for the Jensen source:

Jensen, Joli. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization.” The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Routledge, 1992, pp. 9-29.

#ask me anything #fandom meta-discourse #bc I always said I wouldn't get involved in fandom discourse #oh no I'm us/them-ing in my tags!#shame on me!

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