Being an active participant in fandom requires a certain level of self-regulating in order to be a healthy activity. It requires the ability to say “Not for me,” or “Not today,” and walk away.
We can have conversations about patterns we see in fanworks. We can discuss how we portray characters and relationships, how to effectively convey what we want to in writing, how to sensitively approach representations of marginalized characters. But having those conversations productively requires that we approach each other in good faith, and it requires the ability to self-regulate–including recognizing that often there is no hard line, no black and white answer, and we won’t always come to the same conclusions.
It requires an understanding up front that eliminating all fanworks we don’t care for is not the end goal of these conversations.
I’ll give a personal example. There is a ship that deeply, viscerally upsets me in like 95% of its iterations. I can explain why I don’t like it if asked. I’ve written about why I don’t think it’s handled well in canon.
And if I wanted to–if I wanted to–I could make a very convincing-sounding argument for why that ship is objectively bad and wrong and no one should ship it. Not because that’s objectively right, mind you, but because I’m good at arguing. I could slap that together in like… ten minutes, probably.
I don’t do that. If I vent about it on my own blog, it’s as infrequently as I can manage, because I do my best to avoid the content that upsets me. I don’t seek it out to get riled up about it. I don’t seek out content that upsets me, read it in its entirety, and then leave angry comments and send my friends to harass the author. I don’t choose a high-profile writer for the content I don’t like and engage in a targeted campaign of harassment against them all while claiming to be addressing a general problem.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself. You are not engaging in healthy behavior or productive coping mechanisms. You are not keeping yourself safe, and you are not helping to make fandom safer for others. You are not engaging in good faith.
If you find that you do this and you can’t seem to stop, you may need to take some kind of further steps up to and including taking a break from fandom. I’m serious. I’ve taken breaks myself for that exact reason. There’s no shame in it.
Please monitor your own ability to self-regulate. Please actively evaluate whether or not you are engaging in healthy and productive behavior, for yourself and for others.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself.
Tag: to be kind to yourselves
load-bearing
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice – they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
I would like to invite you all to embrace the ancestors you never knew.
As members of the queer community, we are in a unique space in that our marginalization is not always shared with our biological family. So we are often left with a feeling of separation to our community and our history, and I want to take a moment to encourage you all to try and bridge that gap within your minds. Think of the queer people who came before us as your family, because so many of them lived their lives so that yours could exist in the way it does.
Think of Oscar Wilde standing in court admitting his love and rejecting the idea that is was shameful in front of his peers. Think of Magnus Hirschfeld collecting data and research so that he could find a path to freedom paved with facts. Think of Marsha P. Johnson, giving out cookies to other sex workers and transgender people on the street and her rage as she threw that shot glass and ignited a revolution.
These people are your family, they are your history, and they built a world so that you could live in it. You may not be related by blood but you are related by history, their lives are irreversibly connected to ours and I encourage you all to take time to hold that in your minds as you move forward today.
Watch: Kristen Bell opens up about the mental health double standard and how she manages her own struggle.
Follow @this-is-life-actually
Hit reblog on this so hard
SHOUT OUT TO KRISTEN BELL’S MOM THOUGH? WHAT KIND OF FANTASTIC SELF-AWARE PARENTING, WELL DONE MA’AM
People will tell you that emotional abuse isn’t real and what you’re dealing with isn’t that big a deal and you’re just exaggerating, but let me tell you something.
If you’ve ever been wary of everyone you know, even people you trust, because you’re expecting them to get angry with you over literally anything, make fun of you, or start making threats, something’s wrong.
If you’ve ever had to plan things in anticipation of a potential tantrum that you fear will be taken out on you, something’s wrong.
If you succumb to someone’s demands because you’re never sure if their threats are empty or legit and you just want to play it on the safe side, something’s wrong.
If you find yourself jumping at smaller noises in anticipation that they’re a warning sign for a tantrum, something’s wrong.
If you hide things – especially things that make you happy – because you’re so afraid that they’ll make fun of you for liking them, scold you for liking something they don’t, take them away, destroy them, or that they’ll defile them and ruin that love you have for them, something’s wrong.
If you find yourself being silent in the face of mild disagreements or thinly-veiled insults, rather than standing up for yourself because you just don’t want to start an argument and make things worse, something’s wrong.
If that very lack of standing up for yourself eventually leads to you never offering your opinion in any sort of discussion out of fear of ridicule or being scolded because that’s what you’re so used to, something’s wrong.
If you end up spending a lot of your time in your room keeping to yourself and keeping any trip outside of your room to an absolute minimum because you don’t want to risk putting one toe out of line and setting off a tantrum, yet you’re also aware that hiding out will also cause an issue and you’re probably just minimizing the risk instead of erasing it entirely, something’s wrong.
If you ever habitually glance outside the window to keep watch for your supposed abuser’s car to return from their work, errand or trip, and then heading to your room or other hiding place to keep out of their way, erasing any obvious signs that you’ve been out and about in the rest of your living space, something’s wrong.
If one of your greatest fantasies involves not a dream career or winning the lottery but instead an escape plan succeeding, something’s wrong.
If you could basically summarize your life as living in constant, subtle fear, Something. Is. Wrong.
Emotional abuse is very, very real, and it has lasting consequences that can affect people’s relationships, their jobs, and their lives all-around.
Don’t you dare tell me it isn’t real.
You’ve mentioned your parents a bit — how do you deal with interacting with them? I confronted mine and it’s been “resolved” cause they promised to be better but spending time near them or thinking about them still makes me so miserable. I know there isn’t a magic way to vanish all the hurt but do you have any tips for family holiday time?
I moved 4000 miles away from mine. That’s it, that’s my coping mechanism.
I’ll level with you, I’m 30 and still trapped in a toxic cycle with my parents, even 4000 miles and an ocean apart. They are manipulative, guilt tripping fuckers and I still love them dearly and would be devastated if anything happened to them. And while I’ve had many conversation with them over the years which should have lead to progress or emotional growth…if the other people aren’t willing to heal with you, you need to concentrate on yourself.
I’m going to start therapy soon. For this exact reason. Cause I’m 30 and a phone call from my mother who is 4000 miles away can still send me into a depressive week long spiral because we have, quite literally in my case, a lifetime of knowing how to hurt each other on the tip of our tongues and while I try (oh my god do I try) to be better and not rise to the bait, it still leaves me exhausted and hollow feeling some days. Some days are indeed magical and great and I’ll spend the whole time laughing and joking and I’ll wonder why I ever felt like I needed to move quite so far away.
Other days I’m more than fully aware.
And I know the holidays in particular can be stressful, and I wish I had something more reassuring to say, but this thing you are going through is a process and it will take time. And sometimes all you can really do is just try to breathe and remind yourself none of this is permanent. Pain, guilt, anger, the feeling that you’re never going to escape or get better…these are all temporary things that will pass and you’ll be able to step away from it at some point and heal. Which is hard to do. I know it’s hard to bite your tongue and take the emotional baggage people heap onto you. But you’re stronger than how you feel in those moments and you’re going to be okay.
Self care. Make sure you have things to do that give you reasons to not be around them 100% of the time unless you want to be. It’s also okay if you don’t feel like you have the strength to fight and argue back. It’s okay not to engage, and to do whatever it takes to preserve your emotional well being. And remember, you’re not obligated to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.
No matter how tempting it is to burn it all down.
“You’re not obligated to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”
That is one helluva statement, and I agree wholeheartedly.
Every time I hate my body I remember that there are millions of old rich white men who benefit from my self hatred and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s old rich white men so I snap out of that shit instantly cos I ain’t EVER giving them the satisfaction.
Oh my fucKING GOD
Wait stop this is a game changer.
i have reblogged this 4 times; i have thought about this every fucking day
Reminder!
“If every woman in the world woke up tomorrow and decided that she loved herself and loved her body just the way it is, how many industries would go out of business?”
IMPORTANT
Hey look a few more industries for us millennials to kill!
This is the most motivating thing I’ve ever seen in regards to me stopping hating on my self
“Just because you don’t see it, don’t mean it don’t exist”
It’s very real
important !!!!
disgruntledinametallicatshirt:
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
Queer Fiction Writer 