The first thing you have to understand is that no one wants us. No one has ever wanted us. And by us I don’t mean fans in general, but creative Fandom, if you will. Transformative fandom–writers and artists and gif makers and vidders and podcasters and podficcers and the community that supports them.
Don’t be fooled by the occasional mainstream media article that uses mostly respectful language or the academic study that talks about transgressive fannish behavior like it’s admirable. People reading those news articles laugh at us and you don’t exactly see universities creating Fandom Studies departments.
Nor do we have the buying power we like to think we do. Think about it. We wouldn’t have to transform media to suit ourselves if that media already existed. If Marvel gave a damn about Fandom money vs fandom money, they’d be the ones posting the explicit Cap/Iron Man pics. They’ll take our money, but it’s not as important as small-f fandom money because there’s nowhere near as much of it.
So that leaves ue as exactly what we are: extreme niche hobbyists. And you know what? We’re not even nice, easy, safe, niche hobbyists like knitters or…idk, curling fans. We like trangressive sex a whole lot, we tread a very fine legal line in a time when intellectual property laws are a big fucking deal, we’re hard to advertise to, and, to make things worse, we have a nasty habit of dragging our platform admins into our petty, internecine Fandom Drama.
(seriously it’s like if the dude who runs the Giants SB Nation site went running to the SB Nation admins saying that the dude who runs the Dodgers site is a pedophile just because he implied Madison Bumgarner might be a little racist.)
But Telesilla, you say. Are we really bound to your fate? Destined to spend our fannish lives like you have, migrating from one site after another, always losing people and history along the way? This is so depressing! There has to be an answer!
Well, once upon a time I thought the answer was “by fans for fans” and wow, have I been burned by that one. Our greatest triumph is routinely attacked by its own users and our best functioning social media platform doesn’t have the bells and whistles corporate sites can offer. And AO3 and Dreamwidth are the success stories. Ask me about JournalFen. (on second thought, don’t. I don’t have the energy to explain without overusing the word “robust” and talking about ice weasels.)
I’m enough of a Old Time Internet Person to still think doing it ourselves is the best answer we have, but it takes a special kind of person to dedicate themselves to serving a notoriously fractious internet community that has no money and wants you to cater to their every whim. It takes an even more special kind of person to do it long term. Fandom history shows us that those people don’t come along often. (personal history shows me that I am, alas, not one of them.)
Until they do, we’ll just lurch from corporate platform that doesn’t really want us to corporate platform that doesn’t really want us. Because that’s the bottom line–we’re an extreme niche hobby and there’s no real money to be made off us. Under late capitalism…well, I don’t want to be that Fandom Old, but really, what did we expect?
The thing about this photoset is that Evans is a passive subject for the camera.
Most photos of a beefy blonde male have him staring aggressively. You know the type I mean – stance wide and shoulders spread, eyes lit with challenge, as if he’s about to punch or fuck the camera man. This set is the exact opposite. Evans glances away from the camera like a Victoria’s Secret model, or else peeks from behind a shirt like he’s asking for approval. The photos where he’s on his knees have his spine curved to show off his slender waist, elbows in to show submission. Heck, in one picture the curve of his torso mirrors the curve of the lady on the poster in the background.
Some photographer, when deciding to work with Evans, decided to shoot him in a way that women are often portrayed, instead of the traditional machismo alpha male bullshit. Thank you, photographer. Tumblr is grateful.
Oh wow someone added smart meta to this photoshoot. That means I can constantly reblog it without shame.
Honestly, I think people seriously misinterpret Kylo Ren’s role as a villain, and not in a “he’s so misunderstood” Draco in leather pants kind of way.
He’s fascinating because he’s one of the few fictional villains that has some stuff in common with some of the real men who do dangerous and deadly things– he’s posturing, he feels persecuted, he’s explosive and uncontrolled, when he tries to look like a cool villain and give off that glib/‘badass’ vibe, it feels forced and awkward, it’s easy to laugh at him, but then he does something incredibly evil and reminds you that pathetic wannabes can be really scary dudes, too. He reminds me of school shooters, domestic abusers, extremely vitriolic alt-right internet trolls.
He doesn’t represent some grand vision or evil master plan like Voldemort. It’s all about outwardly channeling his inner turmoil and rage into self-aggrandizement, getting control over other people because he can’t control himself. He has thoughts, feelings, weaknesses, and at least a little bit of good in him. That doesn’t make him a misunderstood hero. The fact that he’s human and three dimensional and has people who care about him is part of what makes him more like the real evil that walks among us every day in the world.
People are always saying, “Kylo Ren is such a pathetic villain, he’s a whiny emo trying to dress up like a cool bad guy,” but that is lampshaded IN-universe, that people think that’s lame, too, even Snoke. People keep thinking that Kylo was supposed to be a cool villain like Darth Vader and that the movies failed miserably in portraying him as one, but I don’t see how.
White dudes are just pissed that they don’t have any heroes to identify with in the new trilogy, but see a lot of themselves in Kylo Ben, so rather than admit that they can be (and usually are) the villains in other people’s stories, they feel the need to justify that the one character they identify with is actually a hero…
Huh, it’s almost like it kinda hurts to only be represented by villains in blockbuster movies or something…
*sips this scalding hot tea*
He reminds me of school shooters, domestic abusers, extremely vitriolic alt-right internet trolls.
Fanfiction is the madwoman in mainstream culture’s attic, but the attic won’t contain it forever. Writing and reading fanfiction isn’t just something you do; it’s a way of thinking critically about the media you consume, of being aware of all the implicit assumptions that a canonical work carries with it, and of considering the possibility that those assumptions might not be the only way things have to be.
Anne Jamison, Fic: Why Fan Fiction is Taking Over the World.
While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.
One thing I was thinking about today was Alexander Pierce. I feel like one thing that’s been under-discussed in Cap 2 meta (at least, from what I’ve seen on my dash– maybe it’s been talked about elsewhere!) is the privilege of Alexander Pierce, a privilege that is very deliberately communicated onscreen.
Pierce, as a character, is visually distinctive: he’s not just an older white man, but a very specific genre of older white man. His three-piece suits and tortoiseshell glasses suggest a fondness for the styles, at least, of some happier past: the gentlemen’s era (to me located sort of vaguely pre-Philby) when men like him knew how to be graceful with power, because it was something that came naturally to them, something they would never have to demand. His charm, his generally pleasant demeanor are of a piece with this– after all, as he himself tells Steve, he’s the diplomat: the one who keeps his hands clean while Nick Fury does what needs to be done.
ok a followup from my irony post: one of the things i love most about steve rogers as seen in the mcu is that he doesn’t do the thing that ‘feels right’ or looks most virtuous or american or whatever, he’s not sentimental, he knows what hell is like because he has been there and it’s called the western front. he grew up sick and poor and irish catholic when there was no kindness for those things in the american narrative, he is not the kind of guy who thinks everything will turn out okay if you just believe in yourself.
he doesn’t do what he feels is the right thing, he does what he decides is the right thing. and sometimes it feels terrible, and has terrible consequences. at no point in ‘civil war’, for instance, does he seem to think his decision is The Right Choice and tony’s is Wrong. he knows there was no right answer, only two wrong ones, and he picked the one he could live with. and people bled for it.
i wouldn’t say he’s a ‘logic’ character, he’s not that trope, but he is secretly, subtly, ruthlessly thoughtful.
so when he does something like, say, become a fugitive from the entire world within minutes of hearing there’s a shoot-first order out on bucky, it’s not that blind emotional panic that drives so many heroes. it’s as cold and unstoppable as a glacier.
an emotionally driven hero has, inherently, a sense of entitlement about the outcome of their choices. if you believe in your friends, if you tell the truth when you ought to lie, if you refuse to take the kill shot because heroes don’t kill, things will definitely turn out okay in the end somehow. and of course the narrative always supports this, because that’s the genre, that’s the trope set. there’s no room for a counterpoint in their universe.
and then there’s captain fucking america.
look, i’m sleep-deprived and haven’t planned this post out at all so it’s probably kind of a mess, but what i’m getting at here is that the ‘golden boy’ of superheroes, the star spangled man with a plan, this corny, schmaltzy, old-timey character, isn’t light because the darkness hasn’t touched him. he’s light because he set his jaw and marched into the darkness and he set it the fuck on fire.
tl;dr i love steve rogers a lot the end.
someone: why are you so obsessed with that hockey comic
me, inside: i seldom see the webcomic medium so skillfully and passionately utilized to independently publish overwhelmingly positive, feel-good content that nonetheless presents subversive and socially critical views on society. the handling of lgbt issues for once left me proud of my identity rather than uncomfortable, the handling of mental health issues gave me an emphatic, outside view on something i and many of my peers endure that has changed my coping for the better. masculinity and femininity and androgyny balance gloriously, with none being portrayed as inherently inferior to any other. the interpersonal connections and development between characters is realistic and intriguing. the comedy appeals to many, and is crude and clever and lovely. the fanbase is enthusiastic and makes both the consumption of the comic and the resultant creation of fan content enjoyable
me, outside: it had a whole page on butts one time and that was pretty funny i guess
The design of Bucky’s muzzle in the film is so aesthetically/symbolically pleasing because of how much it tells you. I mean, there’s posts and posts going around about how expressive The Winter Soldier managed to be while having like 6-7 lines totaly, but it’s also what he doesn’t say and what he can’t say that’s telling.
What seemed so startling to me was that the mask wasn’t cloth or leather or something that is easily taken off, but hard and confining and tight on his face. Bucky isn’t supposed talk. He’s supposed to carry out his orders like good little attack dog that he is.
The mask- or muzzle- keeps him tight on a leash and anonymous. He’s not supposed to say much, because he’s not supposed to be there. He’s the ghost story, he doesn’t have a voice he has a legacy and a trigger finger.
The rest of his face is uncovered (Unless you count the war paint, but you can still see everything there), because none of that’s a threat to the people who own Bucky. They don’t care about his looks and they don’t care about how safehe is, they just don’t want him to have a voice (consent) or to spill their heinous secrets. They want to keep him tight to them and dependent.
I mean, there’s a reason he was okay with taking the goggles off on the bridge, but didn’t even think to touch the mask. Didn’t take it off. It was Steve who took it off.
Which. It was Steve who gave him a voice again. Steve removes Bucky’s mask and we have a face to point to the figure, we have more than just a shadow and a ghost, but a person, something that can show the audience and the world his autonomy. We see his emotions more clearly when his mouth is open in slack-jawed confusion, when his jaw is set and furious in the bank.
The first thing he learns after his mask is removed is his name. Bucky has a name, and the next thing he says is asking about Steve.
Steve removes Bucky’s muzzle- removes some of his shackles and restraints- and we already see a man- albeit a shell of one- rather than the vicious brutal attack dog that Hydra molded and forged from Russian winters and blood.
ealdor 