An open letter to executive producers, writers, and cast in the age of Twitter, tumblr, AO3, Instagram, Youtube, whatever social media platforms come next, and global audiences.
Congratulations! If you’re reading this its highly doubtful you’re in any way involved in mass media production but I’m fucking sick of shitty audience engagement by multi-billion dollar media companies and anyway this was better than working on my dissertation you’ve probably got a successful show!
That’s fantastic! Your work is being viewed by millions of people! Pat yourself on the back! But wait! Oh dear. There’s a hiccup. Suddenly you notice tweets and messages and questions at SDCC about your characters – your beloved, money-making, copyrighted intellectual property – being…gay??
You didn’t intend this, your protagonist and antagonist and supporting characters and background characters are 100% heterosexual!! What ever will you do?!
Fear not, my hypothetical content creator! I’m about to break down some key do’s and don’ts for when you find yourself suddenly in possession of a queer fandom. I will categorize my advice in three simple levels to help you best choose which type of engagement with your fandom is right for you, your show, and your network: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Please note: this is not an exhaustive post. I can’t literally write the book for you on how media producers can engage their diverse, 21st century audiences (well, lol I could but you’re not paying me so suck it) and fandoms – like any subculture – vary greatly in demographics, linguistic quirks, norms, and culture. That means there is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy for dealing with your most passionate fans. Theoretically, you have marketing people who earn a paycheck. Make them work for it by doing some actual research instead of just changing the fonts on the SDCC posters.
Ready? No? Well too fucking bad because here we go.
Actually, no, I’m sorry, hold up. We need to lay some groundwork first. Let’s call these our a priori assumptions about fandom in general but queer fandom in particular.
Assumption 1: Your queer fandom is not going anywhere. You’re fucking stuck with us. You will not get rid of us. Better bigger assholes than you show runners, executive producers, marketing teams, writers’ rooms, and casts have tried. We’re still here. We still show up at all the conventions. We still produce fanfiction, art, videos, meta. We still spend ungodly amounts of money, time, and energy engaging with the media you have created. Even sometimes especially when we are angry at it. We are here to stay.
There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.
1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not. Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”
2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.”
Sometimes shipping something does mean that. Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.” Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B. Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.” And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes.
Large fandoms—things like Doctor Who, or Supernatural, or Star Trek, or any superhero comic—tend to have unique and separate sides to them: curative and transformative.
Curative fandom is all about knowledge. It’s about making sure that everything is lined up and in order, knowing how it works, and finding out which one is the best. What is the Doctor Who canon? Who is the best Doctor? How do Weeping Angels work? Etc etc. Curative fandom is p. much the norm on reddit, especially r/gallifrey.
Transformative fandom is about change. Let’s write fic! Let’s make art! Let’s make a fan vid! Let’s cosplay! Let’s somehow change the text. Why is Three easier to ship, while Seven is more difficult? What would happen if ______? Transformative fandom is more or less the norm on tumblr. (And livejournal, and dreamwidth, and fanfiction websites, and…)
Here’s the big thing: there’s a gender split. Find a random male fan, and they’ll probably be in curative fandom. Pick a random transformative fandom-er, and they’ll probably be female. Note that this is phrased in a very particular way—obviously there’s guys who cosplay and write fic, obviously there’s women who don’t. But men tend to be in the curative fandom, while transformative fandom is predominately women—and/or queer people, POC, etc. Why? Because the majority of professionally-made media is catered towards a straight white male demographic, leaving little room for ‘outsiders.’ Outsiders who, if they want to see themselves in media, have to attack it and change it—hence slash fic, hence long essays claiming that Hermione Granger is black, hence canons about trans characters or genderqueer characters.
And then curative/male fandom tends to view most things that transformative/female fandom does with disdain. Why? Because, in their eyes, it devalues canon. Who cares about knowing about Tony Stark’s lovers if somebody’s gonna write a fic where Toni Stark is flying about? Their power is lessened. Scream of the Shalka is unambiguously not canon—but it doesn’t have to be in order for me to read and enjoy a 30k fic where the robotic Master was secretly in the TARDIS during Nine and Ten’s time and they shagged behind the scenes. Canon? No, but who gives a shit?
Also, as transformative fandom tends to be an outsider looking in, they’re much more likely to analyze the work from a queer/PoC/neurodivergent/gender perspective. If I come to /r/gallifrey and start to talk about how ‘In the Forest of the Night’ had a questionable portrayal of mental health/autism, I get blank stare. If I go on tumblr, I get a conversation. This is also where the ‘overreacting, shrieking SJW’ trope plays in, either because of a redditor’s misunderstanding of terms and therefore assuming that a mild critique is a scathing one, or because the tumblr user in question is young/inexperienced and jumping the gun.
So, there you have it: /r/gallifrey’s bashing of reddit is part of a larger split in how men and women tend to enjoy fandom, and a lashing against how fanfiction/related things addresses fandom because it’s not the right “kind” of fandom. And also because tumblr is popular with teenage girls, and there’s nothing reddit loves more than shitting on whatever teenage girls like.
reddit user lordbyonic on the difference between reddit and tumblr fandom
but it also explains WHY fanfic (and the population of people who read it) is largely written by women
do you ever read a fic that is so much better than the actual canon that you get angry
It’s not so much a matter of putting on slash goggles as it is taking off your heteronormativity goggles. Slashers don’t “see slash” everywhere. They just apply the same standards to two men (or two women) on screen as they would to a man and a woman.
To an extent it’s a problem with fandom: the fact is that you’ve got thousands of intelligent people thinking about a problem, and statistically speaking some of them are likely to come up with something more clever than the creators. […] There comes a point at which, frankly, fandom IS better than the creators. We have more minds, more cumulative talent, more voices arguing for different kinds of representation, more backstory… The thing is that I rarely get involved with a show without a fandom anymore, because I actually enjoy the analysis and fic and fun more than I enjoy the show itself. Similarly, I get drawn into shows I otherwise wouldn’t really consider by the strength of their fandom. And I want the shows to live up to their fandom, but it’s an almost impossibly high bar, because the parts of fandom I choose to engage with are often parts that wouldn’t be considered sufficiently accessible or relevant to a majority of viewers. So… basically, for me, fandom is primary, and canon is secondary. The latter is really only there to facilitate the former.
glitterarygetsit, in a discussion on fan responses to media on facebook
#this is the first time i’ve really articulated this #and i was quite pleased with it #this is the thing: i care so much less about original material than i do about fanworks
If you wish to take part in any fandom, you need to accept and respect these three laws.
If you aren’t able to do that, then you need to realise that your actions are making fandom unsafe for creators. That you are stifling creativity.
Like vaccination, fandom only works if everyone respects these rules. Creators need to be free to make their fanart, fanfics and all other content without fear of being harassed or concern-trolled for their creative choices, no matter whether you happen to like that content or not.
The First Law of Fandom
Don’t Like; Don’t Read (DL;DR)
It is up to you what you see online. It is not anyone else’s place to tell you what you should or should not consume in terms of content; it is not up to anyone else to police the internet so that you do not see things you do not like. At the same time, it is not up to YOU to police fandom to protect yourself or anyone else, real or hypothetical.
There are tools out there to help protect you if you have triggers or squicks. Learn to use them, and to take care of your own mental health. If you are consuming fan-made content and you find that you are disliking it – STOP.
The Second Law of Fandom
Your Kink Is Not My Kink (YKINMK)
Simply put, this means that everyone likes different things. It’s not up to you to determine what creators are allowed to create. It’s not up to you to police fandom.
If you don’t like something, you can post meta about it or create contrarian content yourself, seek to convert other fans to your way of thinking.
But you have no right to say to any creator “I do not like this, therefore you should not create it. Nobody should like this. It should not exist.”
It’s not up to you to decide what other people are allowed to like or not like, to create or not to create. That’s censorship. Don’t do it.
The Third Law of Fandom
Ship And Let Ship (SALS)
Much (though not all) fandom is about shipping. There are as many possible ships as there are fans, maybe more. You may have an OTP (One True Pairing), you may have a NOTP, that pairing that makes you want to barf at the very thought of its existence.
It’s not up to you to police ships or to determine what other people are allowed to ship. Just because you find that one particular ship problematic or disgusting, does not mean that other people are not allowed to explore its possibilities in their fanworks.
You are free to create contrarian content, to write meta about why a particular ship is repulsive, to discuss it endlessly on your private blog with like-minded persons.
It is not appropriate to harass creators about their ships, it is not appropriate to demand they do not create any more fanworks about those ships, or that they create fanwork only in a manner that you deem appropriate.
These three laws add up to the following:
You are not paying for fanworks content, and you have no rights to it other than to choose to consume it, or not consume it. If you do choose to consume it, do not then attack the creator if it wasn’t to your taste. That’s the height of bad manners.
Be courteous in fandom. It makes the whole experience better for all of us.
otp: both have a severe case of abandonment issues that they don’t discuss and use anger or jokes to avoid talking about them.
me: yes…
otp: hate and annoy each other at every turn and have an overtly antagonistic relationship yet have more in common than they think.
me: niceeeeeee
otp: form a begrudging friendship that they deny to other people while still obviously caring about each other.
me: incredible
otp: fall in mutually beneficial love where they subconsciously help each other become better people just by being together.
me: I WILL FLIP THIS TABLE RIGHT NOW!
There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.
1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not. Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”
2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.”
Sometimes shipping something does mean that. Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.” Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B. Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.” And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes.
shealwaysreads 