Fandom Pains

Guys, I saw Endgame.

I am not commenting on it this week because spoilers and I DO NOT want to spoil it for you. So, that is all. Hear my thoughts in a couple weeks.

So, today, I'm taking on a subject that is a little hard to handle, at least for me: the fandom.

A fandom by popular parlance is the community of fans around a certain subject, usually books, movies, TV shows, etc. You have your Harry Potter fandom, your Marvel fandom, LOTR fandom, and on and on and on. The fandom often will talk about their subject of choice online and in person, make/buy merch for it, make/buy fan art, write/read fan fiction, and in general celebrate their favorite franchises of entertainment.

I like fandoms. I'm part of a few. I enjoy looking at fan art and while I avoid fan fiction (it's just not my thing), I think there are a lot of great things coming out of fandom culture. I love that fans are celebrating and interacting with the material they love, and exploring the nuances of plot, character, and setting in such a collaborative way. (And, as a writer, may the universe bestow my works with a fandom!)

That said, I also think that there are a lot of toxic things in the fandom culture because toxicity can arrive in any group of people because people are people no matter what they do or love. Any group can have its unhealthy aspects, and fandoms are no exception.

For example, the ideas that only certain people can be fans. Like, if you're a girl, you can't be a fan of video games, or the flip, that boys don't like that kind of book or show and therefore can't really be fans. Or, if you didn't come in at the start you're not a real fan, or if you don't know everything about the subject you're not a real fan. The idea that some people are "better" because of some arbitrary level of "fanness" and then the policing of that superiority is certainly something I'm not proud of in fandom circles.

Another thing that I take major issue with is part of the shipping culture. "Shipping" is a term that refers to the reader/viewer wanting two characters to be in a relationship. It can refer to platonic relationships, but more often than not it means romantic ones. It's pretty much the reader holding up to characters and saying, "Now kiss."

Everyone can be shipped. Everyone. I have ships of my own, and not all of them are canon (actually real in the book/show/movie I'm a fan of). I take issue when the ships are:

- Incestuous
- Actively abusive (in canon or in "fanon")
- CHILD pornography

I think fans who want illegal or harmful practices in the relationships they admire really need to...talk to someone, for many reasons.
 

It also might not be a bad rule of thumb that if the character themselves, in canon, would hate your ship, it's worth a rethink.

The last thing I find problematic in fandom culture, and this one is really open for debate, is the clash of canon and "fanon," the characterizations/plots/ideas/themes present in the canon of literature, and the characterizations/plots/ideas/themes that exist only in fan culture.

This is NOT me saying don't make your own AUs and headcanons and fan fiction of an existing work! Interact with the text, have fun. This is remembering what canon is and what, at the end of the day, never really happened, and not getting angry with the canon for not being fanon.

I see this online, a lot, and lately with the Star Wars movies. Fans get hyped and start developing ideas about what they want the franchise to do next, and make art and write fics and basically create their ideal version of the franchise, even rewriting characters and situations in the process and spreading these ideas until the fandom as a whole accepts them (remember, these are not canon), and then the next installment of the franchise comes out...and it does none of these things.

Don't get me wrong, I think The Last Jedi was a deeply flawed story, but because of what it was by itself (the Poe and Finn narrative was unnecessary). I think Solo was a very fun movie but many fans hated it because they had different ideas of who Han Solo is and how he should have been portrayed. From ideas that were not canon.

Okay, getting out of that one before I slip into the Extended Universe hole. I acknowledge that is real and entertaining. But I also acknowledge that when it comes to Solo, all of that is not canon.

But I see this in other fandoms. Some fans create this overhyped ideal in their minds, and get angry because they don't get what they want. Or they spend years rewriting characters to fit their own views and ideals better, and when the canon proves that those characters aren't those ideals, they get angry. Fans not accepting canon, when the canon is in fact well-written and true to theme and character, just because the fans didn't get the ending they wanted for their favorite characters or because they misread the story and didn't realize it, doesn't seem healthy to me.

Like I said, this one is open to debate. Fans should headcanon and have fun with the stories they love. And writers should be held to bad writing if they forget their characters and fail to write realistically. But I do struggle, as a writer, with fans who rewrite stories to their own specifications and then get upset when the writer, with their own vision and perspective, does something different. I just think a healthy understanding of "canon" and "fanon" may help, as well as the ability to take a piece of art's value for what it is by itself, and not what fans wanted it to be.

After all, if the story is not compelling enough, or the characters not interesting enough, or the setting not impressive enough, then why did you all become fans in the first place? Let the writers do their work, and do your own, but don't be upset if the writers decided to go in a different direction.

(If you have an idea for a great story, but the characters are acting out of character, related to canon, and the story would never happen, and the ships make no sense...may I suggest that you, as a writer, are actually creating original concepts and maybe should embrace that?)

Anyway, I love fandoms and the jokes and perspectives they bring to stories I love. I enjoy the fan art and the AUs that put the characters in new situations we don't get to see in the canon. (The Avengers at Disney World is one of my favorites.) But I'm given pause by a lot of the toxic mindsets and actions I see in fandoms that can rob the fandom of what gave it rise in the first place: the story fans love and the fun of interacting with it with other people who love it just as much.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and may you and your fandoms thrive!