Your fandom weather report for the day: The sky is not falling, but you’ll want an umbrella, because we’ve got a heavy shitstorm settling in for the duration.
Okay, so I woke up today to the news that Amazon is now launching Kindle Worlds. [ Press Release ] [ Kindle Worlds page ]I have spent the entire day trying to come up with a coherent response. It’s such a massive topic that I don’t know where to begin - but coming on the heels of yesterday’s post about publishing & fanfiction (which was specifically about fanfic that gets the ‘serial numbers filed off’ before publishing), I felt an obligation to write a follow-up in the light of Amazon’s announcement.
You should probably read those links before you freak right the fuck out, because it’s totally okay to get outraged, here, but probably not for the reasons you think.
Now let’s dissect the likely reactions from all quarters and compare them to the actual facts:
Posts tagged fannish bsns
Cats & Dogs Living Together: A Response to the Kindle Worlds Announcement
A Proper S.H.I.E.L.D. Moment in NYC
ABC News Producer Meredith Frost Tweeted a photo today that shows “Agent Coulson Lives” on the pavement of New York City. A proper S.H.I.E.L.D. moment in NYC. Agent Coulson @clarkgregg we await your return. twitter.com/MeredithFrost/… — Meredith Frost (@MeredithFrost) May 12,… … Read More
DO YOU GUYS ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND THAT WE, AS A FANDOM, BOUGHT A CHARACTER BACK TO LIFE? And not even a main character that has his own bankable movie eventhoughhetotallyshould.
Damn, man. This is why I stare blankly and wordlessly when people say fandom is weird. I mean, it is, but WOW, PEOPLE. TUMBLR = ACTUAL LAZARUS PIT.
THE POWER OF FANDOM COMPELS YOU.
Fandom is awesome, and it is incredible to be a part of something like this.
hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women.
also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it.
anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!
you know what would be cool?
fandom starter kits
like maybe you start a series or something and you order the package for that show
and inside is a t-shirt for that thing, a welcome message, a list of places the fans hang out and what they call themselves, a list of controversies and what behaviour to avoid, a list of relating series’, and a brief history of the fandom
And a decoder ring. That would be VERY HELPFUL.
Fandom is focus. Fandom is obsession. Fandom is insatiable consumption. Fandom is sitting for hours in front of a TV screen a movie screen a computer screen with a comic book a novel on your lap. Fandom is eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome and not enough exercise and staying up way, way past your bedtime.
Fandom is people you don’t tell your mother you’re meeting. Fandom is people in the closet, people out and proud, people in costumes, people in T-shirts with slogans only fifty others would understand. Fandom is a loud dinner conversation scaring the waiter and every table nearby.
Fandom is you in Germany and me in the US and him in Australia and her in Japan. Fandom is a sofabed in New York, a roadtrip to Oxnard, a friend behind a face in London. Fandom talks past timezones and accents and backgrounds. Fandom is conversation. Communication. Contact.
Fandom is drama. Fandom is melodrama. Fandom is high school. Fandom is Snacky’s law and Godwin’s law and Murphy’s law. Fandom is smarter than you. Fandom is stupider than you. Fandom is five arguments over and over and over again. Fandom is the first time you’ve ever had them.
Fandom is female. Fandom is male. Fandom lets female play at being male. Fandom bends gender, straight, gay, prude, promiscuous. Fandom is fantasy. Fandom doesn’t care about norms or taboos or boundaries. Fandom cares too much about norms and taboos and boundaries. Fandom is not real life. Fandom is closer than real life. Fandom knows what you’re really like in the bedroom. Fandom is how you would never, could never be in the bedroom.
Fandom is shipping, never shipping, het, slash, gen, none of the above, more than the above. Fandom is love for characters you didn’t create. Fandom is recreating the characters you didn’t create. Fandom is appropriation, subversion, dissention. Fandom is adoration, extrapolation, imitation. Fandom is dissection, criticism, interpretation. Fandom is changing, experimenting, attempting.
Fandom is creating. Fandom is drawing, painting, vidding: nine seasons in four minutes of love. Fandom is words, language, authoring. Fandom is essays, stories, betas, parodies, filks, zines, usenet posts, blog posts, message board posts, emails, chats, petitions, wank, concrit, feedback, recs. Fandom is writing for the first time since you were twelve. Fandom is finally calling yourself a writer.
Fandom is signal and response. Fandom is a stranger moving you to tears, anger, laughter. Fandom is you moving a stranger to speak.
Fandom is distraction. Fandom is endangering your job, your grades, your relationships, your bank account. Fandom gets no work done. Fandom is too much work. Fandom was/is just a phase. Fandom could never be just a phase. Fandom is where you found a friend, a sister, a kindred spirit. Fandom is where you found a talent, a love, a reason.
Fandom is where you found yourself.
(via bbcsherlockftw)
especially in light of the recent resurfacing of the love & memories that made up the LOST fandom
(via majorheelturn)This post always makes my heart grow three sizes. Adding dear Lost fandom to it made me scramble for the tissues too. Losties, I love you. I don’t have the words to express how much. Not like that will stop me from trying.
(Source: hesychasm.livejournal.com)
so yesterday evening there was this moment of uber nostalgia over the good old times when Lost was airing and the best fandom that ever happened was active on LJ and stuff and majorheelturn and yours truly were discussing it yesterday and we thought that maybe more of us might…
*waves* I’m crowgirl13, over in journal-land. I miss the Lost gang terribly.
- Mom: You find a job yet?
- Me: Nope. No crop circles, no mysterious disappearances, no unexplained deaths or electrical storms... Nothing...
- Mom: ....what
I guess some people don’t know WHY many in fandom are still angry about Cassandra Claire getting away with plagiarism. Well, you know why?
Because you know Cassandra Claire’s name, but you don’t know Pamela Dean’s.
For all the women I have loved who were dragged through the mud
I’ve read a lot of great essays about how fandom is female-majority and creates a female gaze and a safe space for women and etc. But spend five minutes in fandom and you’ll have an unsettling question.
Why does a female-majority, feminist culture hate female characters so much?
It’s not a question of if it happens. You know it does. You can go into any fandom and see it. Some fandoms are worse than others, but it’s always there. Scroll down the Tumblr tag for any show, movie, book, comic, whatever, and you’ll see nothing but love for the men, and a lot of unjustified hate for the women, maybe with a few defenders here and there insisting on their love for the women in the face of all that hate.
To be clear, we’re not talking about female villains. Male villains get just as much hate. It’s fine if you hate Bellatrix Lestrange or Dolores Umbridge, you’re supposed to. (I personally stan for Bella, but I realize that wasn’t the authorial intent.) This is about people hating Hermione, Ginny and Luna, but loving Harry, Ron and Neville. This is about how ambiguous male antiheroes, like Snape, Zuko, or pretty much any male vampire protagonist can get away with walking that fine line between good and evil and not only remain sympathetic, but be even more beloved for how ~tortured~ he is, but when a female character is morally gray that bitch has to die.
So you can’t tell me it’s okay that you hate Sansa because you also hate Joffrey and he’s a dude. They’re not comparable. It isn’t even comparable if you pick a female antihero. Let’s do this apples to apples, here.
We all know that fandom does this. We all know that it’s fucked up and symptomatic of internalized sexism. What’s really fucking weird about it, though, is that the women doing this hating often aren’t ignorant. These are feminists. These are women who can go on meta-analyses of the writing. Some will hide behind pseudo-feminist reasons for their hate—oh, it’s the writing, we just aren’t given strong female characters! (I saw this used for the women of AtLA: Katara, Toph, Azula, et al. This was about when I just backed away slowly because I know a lost cause when I see it.) I’ve seen women who denied being sexist, but couldn’t name a single female character they liked. And it’s always that the female characters aren’t good enough, even when they obviously have a double standard, and they’re measuring women on an impossible scale full of contradictions and no-win binds, while the men are just embraced and loved pretty much for existing.
The reaction nearly every time one of these women is called out is not to say, “Huh, you may have a point, I should examine the way I judge and process women’s actions more closely,” but an insistence of their feminism, followed by a more detailed description of why that particular woman is terrible and she hates her, as if the whole point were not that fandom is already oversaturated with that kind of hate, and as if the person doing the calling out were not already 110% done with that bullshit.
Particularly telling is that male-dominated corners of fandom do not have this problem. They fetishize, they objectify, they ignore. They don’t hate like this.
We know it happens. What I want to know is WHY.
Theories follow below the cut.
It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
