#THANK U FOR ASKING LEGEND MUAH kissing your forehead this was super interesting to think about i hadn’t seen that post before!!! What are

[dustorange]

opinions?… 😬😬

https://www.tumblr.com/melmov/750293558453501952?source=share

link

Wfa =free, comics = $3.99 per -> subsidized demand -> market distortion -> :/ :(

The claim of that post—“people have gotten tired of unrelenting grimdark” e.g. actual DC main runs and therefore prefer “slice-of-life fluff [that] also presents a coherent, easy-to-enter, balanced storyline” e.g. WFA—is directionally accurate but its also sort of talking about a Different Group of People than DC Comics Readers.

in particular there is a group of people who have been pretty much totally deracinated from developing or being capable of developing their own opinions on media or humor or life. because of social media and maybe also they r very young. there is a general valence to that part of fandom: the incorrect quotes, the Canva-post-derived politics, the memetic vocab + jokes and like this weird very limited view of redditizedhistory and culture+literature consisteing of the binding of Isaac and twoheadedcalf poem. and so there is just genuinely not the ability to process things that haven’t been run through a filter of accessibility. and WFA, which has BEAUTIFUL art and lots of very sweet moments, IS super accessible and its also sort of been through the preapproved foundfamily neoliberal kitsch machine and come out with a passing grade. but yes it is missing that like elusive Something and it also lacks a seriousness and it isnt the Characters. it’s something else. And its so pretentious to say its for people who don’t have the like stamina ??? for longerform storytelling but yes if you pressed me i would say its a bunch of people, primarily young genz and millennial girls/women, whose critical mental faculties and attention spans have been fried by social media and underexposure to challenging original content

that’s a different new group being lassoed into dc stuff from the previous existing audience. The DC Comics Reader People. i don’t know how much of this to do gender politics with but comics fandom has DEFINITELY gotten MUCH more female in the last 2 decades and there was a distinctive male comic book go-to-the-LCS-and-get-physical-copies and rigorously-autisticslly-fight-about-minutia-of-canon culture. Men also r going to be the one who GENERALLY prefer your fightheavy “”””grimdark””” comics, as opposed to women who doooo generally prefer social relational content. And also women-dominated comics fandom spaces are obviously qualitatively different from men’s fandom spaces. So PART of the reason WFA outsells real DC stuff is market distortion and PART is the DCfan genderdemographic shift that favors content like WFA

I rly hesitate to endorse a lot of Canon dc tumblr’s posts about the fanony WFA-style stuff bc it seems so clear that a the latter is enjoyed primarily by a group of very young people and it also feels like there’s a weird power imbalance intellectually between fanon and canon people. AND I AM A BIG BELIEVER IN LET PEOPLE READ AND ENJOY THE CONTENT THEY WANT and they shouldn’t be shamed for enjoying something as visually sweet and cute as WFA. and a lot of canon tumblr’s rants abt fanon stuff r clearly sort of excessively vicious and insecure attempts to feel superior. although admittedly quietly they r correct but it comes off cruel idk. also i think that BATMAN and superman and to some extent some others ARE indeed very flexible in terms of what is canon and what you have to consume to have consumed The Character and The Story. ive never seen BTAS but as far as im concerned, someone who has only watched BTAS is someone who has the right to do whatever batman stuff they want.

Related questions are: Is mainline DC batman stuff GOOD right now? and Is WFA good? I agree that mainline DC stuff isnt the best right now and i haven’t read WFA so i can’t comment on its quality but i honestly don’t think its the case that “WFA is better written than actual Batman comics, so thats why WFA is more popular” lol

#THANK U FOR ASKING LEGEND MUAH kissing your forehead this was super interesting to think about i hadn’t seen that post before!!! What are #your opinions???