I honestly think that we would eliminate one of the major causes of ableism if we stopped basing people’s worth off how much revenue they generate.
Tag: yes
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.
‘Trans bodies are safe here’: Students drown out small anti-transgender demonstration (at the University of British Columbia)
Today, students drowned out a small anti-transgender demonstration that took place mere steps from UBC’s Pride installation outside the Nest.
Two individuals not affiliated with UBC came to campus this afternoon with materials denying the existence of transgender people, while stressing conservative Christian values.
“I’m protesting censorship on university campuses and human rights commissions, and the imposition of transgender ideology and the inability to be able to freely speak out on this topic, as evidenced by some of the responses,” said Bill Whatcott, a demonstrator and well-known anti-LGBT activist.
This is not the first time Whatcott has hosted an anti-LGBT demonstration on university campuses, having appeared at the University of Calgary and theUniversity of Regina in 2016.
Around a dozen UBC students responded by chanting “trans rights are human rights” and “trans bodies are safe here.” Some carried large Pride flags to block the demonstration from view.
ignore this question if it’s too personal but i was wondering… how do you deal with aging, growing old and still being part of fandoms? Im growing older and i feel like every year i have a less and less like… ’right’ to be in fandoms. That i’m to old compared to others etc this scares me shitless tbh
@pearwaldorf added:
(First, I’m sorry this took so long to answer, anon! Life has been a bit overwhelming the last couple of months.)
I’m happy to delve into this a bit. Aging and such is something I think people need to talk about. Otherwise it can be scary sometimes. So for anyone curious, I will be turning 40 on my next birthday.
A little background. I’ve been part of fandom since I was 24 years old. Back then, fandom was a little different and instead of tolerating older fans, we embraced them. I remember going to a Harry Potter conference in 2007. I went to a fanfiction panel that had five women on it, all in their 40s and 50s. They were so happy and confident in their place in fandom and their friendships. It was absolutely beautiful to see.
I remember thinking I hope that’s me some day. Now, of course, things are different. I regularly see posts making fun of people over a certain age for still being in fandom.
We’re all going to get old some day. There’s no stopping that. But getting older doesn’t mean you suddenly lose interest in the things you love. You might have less time to geek out about them, but you’re not gonna lose interest.
I think the key is finding yourself little corner of fandom. Find some people around the same age as you. (For me, I consider ‘same age’ anyone over thirty. There is no upper limit.)
Then basically, once you have this corner, it’s time to say ‘fuck it.’ That might sound harsh, but I refuse to let anyone take away something that makes me happy. Gaming and reading and writing fanfic brings me a ridiculous amount of joy. It’s helped me make friends from all over the world.
Do not let anyone take away your joy. You have just as much of a right to be in fandom as anyone else. And anon, you’re always welcome in my little corner of fandom!
Listen, nonnie. I have been in fandom since I
was 14? 15? and I turn 36 tomorrow. This is a thing that has been part
of me for more than half my life. I don’t know how old you are, but when
I was first starting out in fandom, it was considered a grown-up
pursuit. Sure there were places for under 18s, but the people who ran
the mailing lists, wrote the newsgroup FAQs, and paid for archive
hosting fees? All adults. It was… I don’t want to say unusual for
younger people to be in fandom, but it was made clear that you behaved
respectfully in community/adult spaces. Or you pretended (very badly) to
be an adult and the actual adults overlooked it.It was super helpful to
me as a young-un to have older female fans to look up to, and know that
I could be an adult (whatever the fuck that means) and still have room
for hobbies and interests I loved. It was also helpful, just as a
person, to have a network of older women who were invested in my
well-being but not necessarily involved in my day to day life to turn
to. I am grateful for my fandom aunties, and I hope I can be there for
younger fans the same way.I feel like a lot of the “Ew adults in fandom”
bullshit comes from younger fans who can barely conceive of reaching 30
as a non-abstract thing, and suffer from deep misapprehensions of what
adult life is like. Yes you have to deal with stupid things like
insurance and taxes, but you also have so much more freedom to enjoy the
things you love. I am also irritated by so many heteronormative
presumptions these people seem to have: you get married, have kids, and
become so incredibly boring nobody wants you in fandom anyways. Not
everybody gets married or has kids, and neither of those things makes
you boring, you make yourself boring. So find yourself some friends to
grow old with, and stick to them like limpets. If you can’t, find new
friends. I have found that in new fandoms, I tend to gravitate towards
people my age and older, even if I don’t know it at the time. If you’re
enthusiastic and kind, that’s honestly all most people require to start
talking. There is room for you in fandom always, no matter what age you
are.and I just wanted to second all of it.
All of this. I myself did not discover fandom until I was just about to turn 30 – I didn’t even know what fandom even was before then, and I had no idea that fandom was supposedly not for people my age. It is a hobby like any other, and you’re not too old to have hobbies.
There’s a weird kind of ageist misogyny happening in fandom at the moment, where “women in their 30s and older” are seen by some as the enemy or simply as people who shouldn’t be here in fandom, but honestly – in my own experience, some of the best people I’ve met in fandom are older people; and older than me, a lot of the time: people who can bring their own wisdom and life experience to fandom and navigating the social aspect of fandom as well as fanfic/fanart in a way that many younger people (with a few exceptions, of course) do not yet have the wisdom and life experience to do.
I hope Anon sees this whole “you are too old to have the right to be in or enjoy fandom” stuff for what it is – ageism and misogyny. Because let’s face it, we never tell men of a certain age that they’re too old to enjoy whatever hobby they get really into – why should we do this for women? Why should we do this to ourselves?
There is this expectation in our society that women stop caring about their own needs once they started a family. People ask you how you’re doing and you’re expected to tell them how great your kids are doing in school. Your accomplishments are not your own, your partner and your kids are now your accomplishments.
It’s dangerous bullshit because it literally strips you of your personhood. You’re not a person anymore, you’re a care automaton, designed to care about the happiness of others.
Don’t fall for this. You don’t stop being your own person with your own interests just because you decided to move in with someone or even popped out a kid. You’re still you. Your interests may change but you don’t have to drop all the things you love and join the “clean house” or “best kid in class” fandom.
Women have lives outside of the care for family business. We still love fandom and we’re not going away.
Bonus: fandom olds can mentor the kids. I remember lying my way into message boards and even if no one offered to beta, I learned How To Community by example.
And it doesn’t stop with kids: @thebyrchentwigges dragged me out of my lurk, and a huge part of how I interact with y’all is due to her encouragement.
Do that.
I have nothing against scented candles but this is holy
unsung hero of venom 2018: doctor dan lewis
the man who for once, in the entire history of movie boyfriends, does not give a shit that his girlfriend is within 100 yards of her ex, only that her ex is very ill and needs some tender loving care because wtf is that black space blob
THIS! And even at some point when Anne started to launch into explanations of ‘I swtg nothing is going on between me and Eddie’ he was quick to be like ‘that’s not even an issue. the issue is that he’s about to die and we need to find him????’ At no point was he ever jealous or possessive and he was always very kind and nice to Eddie because he feels secure in his relationship with Anne and trusts her.
Also important: Eddie doesn’t talk shit about Dan. Most of his interactions with his ex’s new boyfriend feature the phrase “Thanks, Dan”, uttered without sarcasm. Eddie doesn’t treat Dan like crap, and he doesn’t try to convince Annie that Dan’s a bad guy. Instead, there’s just a lot of respectful boundaries and genuine concern from everyone for everyone else.
(Except the symbiote because, really, a ravenous parasitic alien that reverse-Stockholm bonds to its host does not understand what boundaries are, much less how to respect them.)
Something to remember, as the election approaches:
The work is never wasted.
Even if the Republicans keep control of Congress–yes, that would be terrible, yes, I would be furious and frustrated and sad and it would hurt like hell–EVEN SO: the work we have done to get here was not wasted.
I was part of the previous “biggest worldwide protest ever,” the global protests against the Iraq War in February 2003.
We lost. The war happened. Is still happening.
But some of the people who got involved then worked for Obama’s campaigns, a lot of them are part of the resistance now, and all of us learned something. The work was not wasted.
Even if we lose. There were Democratic primary debates in my hometown for the first time I can remember. Even if our terrible Republican Congresswoman gets re-elected, there’s still a broader and stronger Democratic Party organization in Mike Fucking Pence’s home state.
The election can’t be an end. It will only be an end if we win and get complacent, or if we lose and give in to hopelessness. We cannot afford either. We do the job that is in front of us. No matter what.
The work is never wasted.
The stories our world tells us are about Great Heroic Struggles With Triumphant Climaxes In Which Good Vanquishes Evil And They All Live Happily Ever After. It’s all about the one extreme emergency during which people rise to the occasion.
Problem is, that’s not how the world actually … works. That’s not how change happens. That’s not how societies are reshaped. We hear about MLK and the bus boycott and the protests, but not the DECADES OF WORK that came before, the organizing and the education and the legal challenges and the hundreds of thousands of people, from great heroes to ordinary people, who put in the grinding every-day work to make the world a better place, step by step, bit by bit. The big things–the speeches, the marches–were the tip of the iceberg. Nothing would have happened without the rest of the iceberg.
The 2018 midterms are the tip of the iceberg. They are incredibly important, yes. But without the rest of the iceberg, they mean nothing. Without ordinary people across America organizing and talking to their friends and coworkers and paying attention to politics and getting involved and volunteering (not just politically, but for all the nonprofits out there working to make the world a better, fairer, more just, more merciful place) the election is useless.
This is not a sprint. It is a relay marathon. If you can run a major leg, awesome. If you can help organize the marathon, awesome. If you can coordinate the people running, awesome. If you can hand out bottled water along the route, awesome. If you can cheer along the way, awesome. If you can remind people that the marathon is happening, awesome. It’s not about great heroes or one person doing it all or one climactic battle in which everything magically gets fixed.
It’s about ordinary people doing what they can. What you can do right now is vote. What you do on November 7 and the months and years following (no matter who wins the election) is stay involved and stay working.
Take care of yourself. Take care of others. Don’t hyperfixate and burn out. Be the tortoise, not the hare. Vote. And then keep moving on.
Unpopular Opinion:
Tumblr’s “walking on eggshells” and “one strike, you’re out” mentality is really really immature.
Reblog if ya agree.
Another unpopular opinion:
The “You can apologize, beg for forgiveness, and change your ways all you want but it won’t change a thing cause you’re still horrible vile trash that deserves to die a fiery death” mentality is really harmful, scary, disgusting, and will probably get someone killed, be it by someone else’s hand or their own
yet another unpopular opinion: the ‘unproblematic fav’ mentality is really bad because you’re putting an individual up on a pedestal and treating them like a deity of sorts and forgetting that they too are human beings and make mistakes.
Another unpopular opinion: Not every mistake is the Worst Thing Ever. Sometimes people make small mistakes, and sometimes ignorance is a small mistake, and they do not need to grovel and beg and apologize perfectly because in the scheme of things it was a small mistake that didn’t even seriously hurt anyone, outside of tumblr’s performative moral outrage being offended.
One more unpopular opinion: Forgivness is actually a good thing and not a moral crime.
Queer Fiction Writer 