fandom

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supreme-leader-stoat:

the-garbage-void-deactivated202:

There’s this weird tendency among fandom types where they’ll take a character, and insist that they are fans of them, before changing their design, age, pronouns, backstory, blood type, species, hometown, favorite color, zodiac sign, medical history, and every other facet of their being.

They will then violently insist that this version is superior to the canon one and act like they “fixed” them and it’s like. Buddy that’s not the same character anymore. That’s just your own oc commiting identity fraud. Like. I get the desire to experiment with different interpretations of a story. But first of all it’s okay to just make an original character if that’s what you really want to do. And second of all, are you even really a fan of the character you “fixed” if they’re a completely different person afterwards?

Like. Idk dude for somebody who claims to be a fan you sure don’t seem to like them as they are :/

Gonna remember “buddy that’s not the character that’s your OC committing identity fraud.”

The Blorbo of Thesus

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intermundia:

Someone in my offline life asked why I bother writing Star Wars fanfic, listing off Disney’s various and assorted sins, all of which of course I agree are awful! BUT. I think Star Wars as a concept doesn’t actually belong to the company that bought the legal right to wring as much profit out of the IP as possible. Star Wars is actually much larger than that.

Star Wars is a massive cultural project, almost half a century old, comprising all forms media, all forms of both official and folk art. It’s a densely woven tapestry of stories, the fruits of the labor and inspiration of thousands and thousands of people. It’s honestly the mythology of many of our childhoods, and it belongs to us in a way that capitalism can’t touch.

It’s truly a global phenomenon too! Writing stories and sharing my theories about Star Wars has brought me into being a member a vast community of people, like I’ve had people ask to translate my stories into Russian, Italian, Chinese. I’ve had comments in my story written in so many languages. I have made friends across the globe, all from sitting at my isolated farm in rural USA.

That’s the reason that I write Star Wars, beyond enjoying the Force, the Jedi, the infinitely expandable galaxy, etc. like there’s room for everybody to tell stories. It’s a beautiful, special thing that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I personally LIKE joining in and adding my voice to an ongoing conversation among people who are excited about the heroes and stories that defined my childhood.

The entire idea of mythology only being available for a corporation, and not for the fans, is absurd to me. If we were in ancient Greece, and you said that you and your friends like to sit around and tell each other stories about Homeric characters, nobody would find it strange! Homer and the Homeric heroes were the pervasive stories that everybody vaguely knew and everyone had the context to easily enjoy a retelling.

I’m a prequels kid, and for me and many people in my generation, Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the fall of the galactic republic are formative stories seen at the ages when stories really matter. The generation before might have had Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo—these figures are so archteypal, they belong to all of our collective imagination. Disney has nothing to do with that.

‘Star Wars’ Fans Raise Money for Transgender Youth in Honor of Padmé’s Influence — The Mary Sue

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Star Wars is a series that helps to inspire hope among fans. Whether it is through Leia’s determination to lead or Padmé’s willingness to do what she thinks is right, the women of the Skywalker family have inspired children for decades, and we’re just talking about the Skywalkers! That’s not even getting into the rest…

‘Star Wars’ Fans Raise Money for Transgender Youth in Honor of Padmé’s Influence — The Mary Sue

In a week of horrible news, this is a really nice story.

meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi again

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Oh wow. I got chills when Duel of the Fates kicked in, it’s still one of the most stunning pieces of music I’ve heard anywhere, not just in Star Wars.

WHAT a day it’s been for prequel fans! I always wondered if it would come. It seemed terribly unlikely in the days where people preferred actors, directors, and teenage fans to kill themselves but it’s nice to know there were always some people out there who wanted to build. My fourteen-year-old self who posted endless fanfiction on theforce.net message boards is SCREAMING right now. (Her username on there was female_obi_wan.)

Fandom and identity

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I remember during J.K. Rowling’s most recent (well, it might not be the most recent anymore) bout of biogtry I saw a tweet saying something along the lines of, “This wouldn’t have happened if you idiots hadn’t made a stupid wizard book a intrinsic part of your identity.” And I couldn’t understand it, and didn’t like it, because that’s what you’re supposed to do!

(Is this the probable autism talking?)

Then a few months after that Chadwick Boseman died, which was awful. Wealthy white film people had been having a go at Black Panther for ages (“not cinema” “despicable”) but suddenly it all stopped. I saw a lot of posts all over the internet saying things like “I feel like Black Panther was part of my identity” and “How do I tell my kids Black Panther is dead?” Black Panther wasn’t real, though… except of course he was.

Making a character or a film or a book part of your identity is, god, it’s such a bad idea. You always end up devastated or disappointed or hurt, for any number of reasons. A terrible idea. But we do it anyway. It’s hardwired into us.

Moonlight of the Red Dwarf variety

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Going back over old Red Dwarf posts and man, I forgot how much…the actual show sort-of-but-not-quite shipped Rimmer/Lister. Or kind of? (I mean, there was a kiss, fake though it was.)

Honestly, of all the situations I expected to find myself in this month, “suddenly hardcore shipping the two main characters of a comedy TV show you’ve loved for ages but never considered that way (while the world is in the middle of one of the worst crisises in decades)” is… not one of them. Ah well. What I do really miss is being In Fandom, I guess. Having a sort of fandom central hub (LiveJournal and then Tumblr used to serve this function) where you could just run in and shout “I LOVE THIS THING” and get a chorus back of “WE ALSO LOVE THIS THING.” I suppose Twitter is sort of the fandom central hub now but Twitter just doesn’t work as a platfom for me because you can’t have long conversations.

Anyway, it also so happens that Red Dwarf continuity looks like this:

except even more nonsensical, so I’d be really bad at being a Proper Fan of it. (I still haven’t actually watched Back to Earth since… heck, probably since it first came out. What the smeg was that?)

Throw into that the fact that I guess I’m sort of too old for Shipping now anyway, and… well, I’ll just be here on the sidelines, reblogging all the lovely Promised Land meta and fanart and jazz to secret side social media accounts and so forth.

But, man Promised Land told such a beautiful story. I’m an absolute sucker for “characters who are two halves of the same whole whether they like it or not” relationships, and I never realised there was one right under my nose for going on a decade. Whaddya know.

I think when Rimmer says to Lister at the end, “There’s a moon here, Listy, that wouldn’t mind some sunlight,” what he’s really saying is “We’re about to die. Please be with me,” and ouch, my heart.

I really do love this thing.

You can tell someone’s fandom age by how aggressively they save fanfic

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nyxelestia:

2014-present: lol why bother?

2007-2014: I know I should, but the likelihood of losing it isn’t that great, so I’m not too worried about it…

2007+: omfg save EVERYTHING! YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THE FIC OR THE USER OR THE ENTIRE GODDAMN WEBSITE WILL VANISH AND YOU LOSE YOUR FAVORITE FIC F O R E V E R !!!

Hell, in 1999, I used to print them out

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taraljc:

whore4batfam:

whore4batfam:

seeing someone’s work on ao3 after seeing their username on tumblr is like seeing your friend dressed up in formalwear when 2 hours ago they were eating pizza in their sweats on your couch

and then when you see a writer who you know mainly from ao3 on tumblr it’s like running into the local news anchor at the grocery store
you know who they are but they’ve never seen you before

i made at least 3 friends IRL at cons cos we were in the same lift in the hotel and they read my nametag and had read something of mine. I am still blown away by that.

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onetraveller:

holywatered:

when you think about it fanfiction is actually amazing

there are thousands of brilliantly written novel-length stories kids wrote from their own brains about characters and shows/books/movies they love all twined into the internet and other kids read these 50k+ stories in their own time and invest themselves in it

nobody’s being paid to write it and nobody’s being told to read it, people do it because they legitimately enjoy it

that is just kind of amazing

#and fanvids #and fandom in general #it’s a (largely) art-centric community built around distance which is really amazing if you think about it #like most grad programs for the arts or artist communes or what have you are all about being locked into a singular place with similar pe… #*people for a predetermined amount of time #just so you can have that energy and produce and critique each other #and fandom has created that here #i mean it predates the internet (with the zine and the trekkie letter circles and whatnot) #and the fact is that somehow we all googled and ended up here #and if you think about it it’s one of the last open apprenticeship places around #fascinated with henry jenkins’ theory that it has to do with women being excluded from other circles of art and making their own in a spa… #*space of their own #(not just women; other minorities as well) #fandom is largely about reclamation and not just narratives but people and issues and things we care about #we come here and we make awful things and we read more and we teach ourselves how to be better #artist commune unto itself #messy yes but also free and open and largely informational #think of how many tuts exist for photoshop #at it’s heart fandom is about art for art’s sake #that’s why i’m surprised people don’t want to study it more #(and believe me when i say i know it’s because at heart people think we are worthless #because we are doing something that is not for profit and only for love #because we are messing around with characters that are not our own #but that kind of misses the point doesn’t it? because the point of fandom is to make it our own because no one is going to make our art f… #*for us in the way that we want) #isn’t it funny how everyone has a ‘when i first started my shit was so awful’ story? #i just want to be like how did you get better? who did you read? whose graphics did you look at? what videos did you watch?#because chances are you were inculcated into this culture the same way everybody else was – by participating in it #and how many other things in the world can you say that about now (for free)?

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