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Favourite DMBJ fanfic tropes - 2022 binge
Jun. 3rd, 2022 09:25 pm- Pingxie getting together only by Grace of Pangzi
- Any combination of Xiao Hua, Hei Xiazi and Xiuxiu in background, casually being much more cool and competent than the main characters
- “Wu Xie touched a thing” being its own genre
- Xiaoge is a Cat Person (sometimes literally)
- Special tag warning just for Sanshu <3
- “FUCKING SANSHU”
- Wu Xie being too busy Angsting over his Decade of Dark Deeds to notice Xiaoge is silently pining
- Pangzi adopting Xiao Mei <3
- Piaopiao is just there
- Any flavor of Iron Triangle Nonsense™
- Xiaoge, a widely adored member of Rain Village community
- Liu Sang, a professional Sufferer
- mostly of Iron Triangle Nonsense™
- Love Stronger Than Amnesia
- Wu Xie and Pangzi having a Married Couple dynamic
- Wu Xie and Xiaoge having THAT Married Couple dynamic
- Kan Jian, a sweet baby angel
- Pining solved by a convenient tomb curse
- Pining solved by Ershu’s quest to get Wu Xie married
- Pining reached critical mass and Hei Xiazi felt compelled to give advice
- Retired Happy Ever After <3
Originally posted on tumblr on 29.05.2022.
Tags:
favourite xmfc fanfic tropes
Jun. 3rd, 2022 09:22 pm- Darwin didn’t die. It just took him a while to reassemble from individual atoms
- Darwin coming back all “wtf guys. WTF” when told about beach divorce
- Erik’s mind is Telepath Catnip because it’s so Orderly
- Moira being Badass™
- Moira being So Done with Charles and Erik’s Drama™
- Moira and Erik respecting each other/becoming friends
- Erik is Ororo’s favourite parent
- Shark Grin
- Charles being the Most Oblivious Telepath on Earth
- Charles is Super Bad at normal interaction without his telepathy
- Emma rolling her eyes at Charles and Erik’s Drama™
- Cerebro Malfunction
Tags:
favourite avengers (2012) fanfic tropes
Jun. 3rd, 2022 09:14 pm- it’s day ending in “y” and Doombots are attacking
- regular Angst O’Clock in Tony’s workshop
- Steve, looking at his watch like, “it’s angst o’clock, time to bring Tony a sandwich”
- Air Vent Clint
- “when did you people move into my tower”
- CAPSLOCK THOR
- “MY FAIR JANE”
- mildly incovenient Magic Curse by Loki precipitates team bonding
- Natasha silently judging everyone in russian
- Mario Kart
- Coulson is just there
- on thursdays Tony gets kidnapped
- a glimpse into Alternate Crapsack Reality precipitates team bonding
- Tony and Steve have Perfect Battlefield Synergy but both of them still think the other secretly hates him
- Surely Everyone Secretly Hates Tony
- Bruce doing yoga in the background
- Tony calls Pepper and/or Rhodey in throes of emotional crisis
- Natasha providing Relationship Counseling at pivotal points in the story
- “идиоты”
- Movie Night
- Steve is either surprisingly well adjusted or existing in perpetual state of Awkward, there’s no middle ground
- Nick Fury, Avengers’ Disappointed Principal
- Bruce drinking herbal teas in the background
- Natasha has knives, Always, Everywhere
- Thor doesn’t get Earth Culture
- Fury’s “you morons need to get off your bullshit” speech precipitates team bonding
- workshop binge
- Tony functions on coffee and two hours of sleep
- Sleep Deprivation causes Emotional Honesty
- Clint and Natasha, SHIELD ninjas
- Hulk likes Tony best
2022 update:
As people keep reminding me in the tags - I FORGOT ABOUT THOR AND POPTARTS. Shame on me!
This post is doing round on tumblr, which reminded me that I never cross-posted it here. Originally published on 24.06.2019.
Tags:
It's been 20 years
Apr. 6th, 2022 09:05 pmI've always been a proponent of firm divide between fandom and creators, and by extension, between creation and the creator. It was instinctive, mostly because I find the idea of creators commenting on fanworks in public invokes in me very strong embarrassment, both first- and second-hand (and it kinda ties in with the reasons I don't vibe with RPF).
And in many ways, this is a very comfortable seat to be sitting in! The author is dead, my city now. If the actor playing my fave says something stupid, I don't have to care about it. I was into MCU, I was into Sherlock, I was on Tumblr in 2012, I am familiar with the ways that creators, actors, writers can fuck over fandom and be fucked over by fandom. It is very freeing to Not Care.
But sometimes even shooting the author at point-blank range is not enough.
This is about JKR and Harry Potter series, actually.
In last weeks I've heard some echoes about the new HP game, the one where the plot is apparently that you're stopping goblins from taking overwhite wizarding world and kidnapping white wizarding children, or something like that. Frankly, I don't want to go looking for more details to make myself angrier, the gist is that it was made by racist people, it's bad, and you know a person crossed some kind of moral horizon if a literal war criminal (Putin) invokes your name to prop up his propaganda!
Looking back, it's kinda bewildering how she ended up where she's at if you weren't paying attention. There was a post on Tumblr - which sadly I can't find now - that summed up how it happened, how she started more liberal-aligned, through her clumsy attempts at retroactively making series more inclusive ("Dumbledore is gay but it's not plot relevant") and then how she descended into being a TERF.
Consequently, we - as in fandom - are having some very relevant discussion on how to deal with that. Harry Potter is too big, and JKR is too involved with her creation to ignore the issue. She's still making money from it. She has a Twitter, she has a platform, she is having real world impact. Which is why I'm writing this, even though I haven't actively participated in HP fandom for years at this point. It's making me uncomfortable (which is good) and it makes me re-evaluate my connection to and attitude toward her works.
HP was my gateway to the fandom. I was a young teen and the religious media in my country were decrying the series as morally degenerate and when I started to read it I indeed went "morally bankrupt" at speed of light in exactly the way these media predicted. It took me barely three months to go from reading these books to reading gay fanfiction! When you're raised catholic in almost entirely catholic country, such journey is a thrill and a revelation. HP fandom was so big and vast that a precocious tween with unmonitored internet access could get exposed to very different world-views and end up really expanding their horizons. I cannot help but look fondly back to that part of my fandom experience, and I cannot help but remember fondly the communities, the fanworks, the batshit crazy wank.
The last time I let JKR make money off me was when I paid for tickets to the first Fantastic Beasts movie, I think. The experience was ok in so-so way, a bit underwhelming, so that along with whatever glimpses of JKR twitter reached my carefully maintained Tumblr dash, it just so happened that I didn't get drawn back into HP. Her media presence corrupted the franchise like harmful radiation, and I'm not inclined to touch it any more. I don't feel quite the same aversion when I go through my folder full of saved fanfics from back when I was into HP, and I'm not removing my HP fic bookmarks, or anything like that. I still believe that the author doesn't and shouldn't intersect with the fandom.
But there is a certain MZB-eqsue effect (MZB - Marion Zimmer Bradley, the author of and the reason why you probably didn't read "Mists of Avalon"). Even if I hadn't moved onto different fandoms by now, I would be distinctly unenthused about HP by now. HP fic, these derivative works, I'll probably still enjoy, but the source material?... Ah, I guess there's a pang of regret originating from my nostalgia, but I'm fine if it fades into obscurity and becomes largely irrelevant.
We can shoot the author, we can proclaim the author dead; however, the corpse is still stinking up the place. Dear JKR, if only you weren't such a piece of shit! Then we wouldn't have to throw you out along with your stuff in order to air it all out.
And in many ways, this is a very comfortable seat to be sitting in! The author is dead, my city now. If the actor playing my fave says something stupid, I don't have to care about it. I was into MCU, I was into Sherlock, I was on Tumblr in 2012, I am familiar with the ways that creators, actors, writers can fuck over fandom and be fucked over by fandom. It is very freeing to Not Care.
But sometimes even shooting the author at point-blank range is not enough.
This is about JKR and Harry Potter series, actually.
In last weeks I've heard some echoes about the new HP game, the one where the plot is apparently that you're stopping goblins from taking over
Looking back, it's kinda bewildering how she ended up where she's at if you weren't paying attention. There was a post on Tumblr - which sadly I can't find now - that summed up how it happened, how she started more liberal-aligned, through her clumsy attempts at retroactively making series more inclusive ("Dumbledore is gay but it's not plot relevant") and then how she descended into being a TERF.
Consequently, we - as in fandom - are having some very relevant discussion on how to deal with that. Harry Potter is too big, and JKR is too involved with her creation to ignore the issue. She's still making money from it. She has a Twitter, she has a platform, she is having real world impact. Which is why I'm writing this, even though I haven't actively participated in HP fandom for years at this point. It's making me uncomfortable (which is good) and it makes me re-evaluate my connection to and attitude toward her works.
HP was my gateway to the fandom. I was a young teen and the religious media in my country were decrying the series as morally degenerate and when I started to read it I indeed went "morally bankrupt" at speed of light in exactly the way these media predicted. It took me barely three months to go from reading these books to reading gay fanfiction! When you're raised catholic in almost entirely catholic country, such journey is a thrill and a revelation. HP fandom was so big and vast that a precocious tween with unmonitored internet access could get exposed to very different world-views and end up really expanding their horizons. I cannot help but look fondly back to that part of my fandom experience, and I cannot help but remember fondly the communities, the fanworks, the batshit crazy wank.
The last time I let JKR make money off me was when I paid for tickets to the first Fantastic Beasts movie, I think. The experience was ok in so-so way, a bit underwhelming, so that along with whatever glimpses of JKR twitter reached my carefully maintained Tumblr dash, it just so happened that I didn't get drawn back into HP. Her media presence corrupted the franchise like harmful radiation, and I'm not inclined to touch it any more. I don't feel quite the same aversion when I go through my folder full of saved fanfics from back when I was into HP, and I'm not removing my HP fic bookmarks, or anything like that. I still believe that the author doesn't and shouldn't intersect with the fandom.
But there is a certain MZB-eqsue effect (MZB - Marion Zimmer Bradley, the author of and the reason why you probably didn't read "Mists of Avalon"). Even if I hadn't moved onto different fandoms by now, I would be distinctly unenthused about HP by now. HP fic, these derivative works, I'll probably still enjoy, but the source material?... Ah, I guess there's a pang of regret originating from my nostalgia, but I'm fine if it fades into obscurity and becomes largely irrelevant.
We can shoot the author, we can proclaim the author dead; however, the corpse is still stinking up the place. Dear JKR, if only you weren't such a piece of shit! Then we wouldn't have to throw you out along with your stuff in order to air it all out.
Watching 镇魂 Guardian is such a trip
Mar. 27th, 2022 05:11 pmDo you know a genre of AU fanfic where the characters are transplanted into completely different setting along with SOME of plot, enough of it that you can see it hitting the important milestones and character beats, but otherwise there's nothing from original backdrop?
镇魂 Guardian is exactly that in live action, but if you were writing the script on toilet paper and respected the cohesion of your plot about as much.
At the same time, from the bottom of my heart: watching it is not a waste of time.
Pretty much the only thing I knew about the drama when clicking "play" was the fact it based on a BL webnovel by priest (who also wrote the novel that got adapted into Word of Honor). The weird sci-fi-esque setup of Guardian is clearly explained in the beginning of the first episode. Despite the fact that nothing really contradicts it outright during the later episodes, somewhere around the middle of the series I was feeling like I misunderstood it anyway. Get yourself a friend to watch it with, because you'll need someone to groan at over the special effects, villains looking like they stepped out of Power Rangers, and the meandering story.
It won't take you long to reach the conclusion that the censorship and poor writing is making mincemeat of SOME sort of plot. And it's not like The Untamed, where they took out a few zombies, a few mature scenes, and the love confession and were good to go with the story still intact. Guardian needed to censor MOST of the setting, leaving only the characters and a few somewhat recognizable storylines.
I managed to last a little over half of episodes, I think, to reach the point where I decided: fuck it. I'm reading the novel. Maybe then I'll understand.
And I did.
Reading the novel and giving up on making any sense of drama plot let me really appreciate the magic of Guardian. By magic, I mean the way the main leads are hitting about 90% of emotional beats of the original story perfectly despite being dropped in lazily sketched AU setting. I was frankly amazed, because I never experienced something like that before. If you read the novel, you can map most of the scenes perfectly onto the original and enjoy the great chemistry and acting that is happening on screen even more.
Drama is not all bad, too. The AU setting can be pretty interesting on its own. There are really funny and cute identity porn shenanigans! (My catnip). The actors are doing an outstanding job and I must give credit where credit is due: the handsome face of man playing Shen Wei definitely helped me persevere.
If you're reading the novel, watch the drama. If you're watching the drama, read the novel. This is the most bewildering accidental (?) intertextuality experiment I've seen, but it's worth it.
镇魂 Guardian is exactly that in live action, but if you were writing the script on toilet paper and respected the cohesion of your plot about as much.
At the same time, from the bottom of my heart: watching it is not a waste of time.
Pretty much the only thing I knew about the drama when clicking "play" was the fact it based on a BL webnovel by priest (who also wrote the novel that got adapted into Word of Honor). The weird sci-fi-esque setup of Guardian is clearly explained in the beginning of the first episode. Despite the fact that nothing really contradicts it outright during the later episodes, somewhere around the middle of the series I was feeling like I misunderstood it anyway. Get yourself a friend to watch it with, because you'll need someone to groan at over the special effects, villains looking like they stepped out of Power Rangers, and the meandering story.
It won't take you long to reach the conclusion that the censorship and poor writing is making mincemeat of SOME sort of plot. And it's not like The Untamed, where they took out a few zombies, a few mature scenes, and the love confession and were good to go with the story still intact. Guardian needed to censor MOST of the setting, leaving only the characters and a few somewhat recognizable storylines.
I managed to last a little over half of episodes, I think, to reach the point where I decided: fuck it. I'm reading the novel. Maybe then I'll understand.
And I did.
Reading the novel and giving up on making any sense of drama plot let me really appreciate the magic of Guardian. By magic, I mean the way the main leads are hitting about 90% of emotional beats of the original story perfectly despite being dropped in lazily sketched AU setting. I was frankly amazed, because I never experienced something like that before. If you read the novel, you can map most of the scenes perfectly onto the original and enjoy the great chemistry and acting that is happening on screen even more.
Drama is not all bad, too. The AU setting can be pretty interesting on its own. There are really funny and cute identity porn shenanigans! (My catnip). The actors are doing an outstanding job and I must give credit where credit is due: the handsome face of man playing Shen Wei definitely helped me persevere.
If you're reading the novel, watch the drama. If you're watching the drama, read the novel. This is the most bewildering accidental (?) intertextuality experiment I've seen, but it's worth it.
I tried to read Dune for the first time about nine? eight? years ago. At the time, I was doing a student practice working in a stuffy basement lab (the charm of old university buildings struggling with lack of space), and my time consisted mostly of spending 2h of setup and them sitting around very still while the computer took readings, keeping eye on everything so the sample wouldn't die. The point is, there was very little to do but to take out my ereader and pass the time. The lab had no wifi, and back then mobile data would cost me, so I had to preload my books to the device.
So it was notable that I got so frustrated with Dune that I actually decided to stop reading it.
By now, I don't remember the specific passage that made me close the file. I just remember being very frustrated! (I feel like it might have been one of passages about genetics or precognition that made me give up on the book in the end, but I cannot be sure). I was disgruntled, too; Dune was the very first book I stopped reading before getting to the ending. Even if a book was so-so, I would usually read just to find out what happened at the end. But Dune was different.
About a year ago, when the new movie was teased, a friend lend me their copy when I admitted that I never read the whole book. Of course, by then I've forgotten most of the plot, so I started reading from the beginning.
Several times.
Never got far.
The book wasn't all that engaging to me, although I also attribute it to the fact that I'm much busier. I just generally had better things to do than slough through Dune.
In the end, I went to watch the movie without reading the (whole) book. I actually like it just fine! The music and scenery were VERY good. I loved the mood and the vibes. Afterwards, I had a feeling like not much happened, which objectively is not true, but the movie has that vibe. There seems to be a lot of stillness, a sense of waiting. (It is also very dark, literally. In cinema it's not so bad, but there are scenes that should have some more light so you can clearly see what is happening). I will go see the second one for sure.
But it's very much a movie I like to be looking at, specifically. Which brings me to my final attempt to get through the book.
My friend, bless her, suggested I listen to audiobook and gave me hers. So I finally listened to the whole book. And the second one, just to make sure.
Nine years later, I can give the final verdict:
I do not enjoy Dune.
The funny thing is, intellectually, I do feel there is a lot of interesting things! A lot of thing I very much enjoy discussing - the world-building and the moral and philosophical dilemmas presented in the text especially. But as interesting as those aspects are, the real stumbling blocks for me are the characters.
Ending of the second book beautifully encapsulates my feelings toward Paul. There is a point in the later half second book where Paul goes to a secret meeting. I was either not listening closely enough, or missed something, but (spoiler alert) Paul by that time is foreseeing his own death; so I though he would die during the meeting and the rest of the audiobook will be probably fallout from his death. When everything happened and Paul was injured but survived, my gut reaction was a betrayed, But you were supposed to die!
Obviously, by that point I had enough of Paul. Over the span of two books he failed to ender himself to me, or have my sympathize with his position. The moment where I like him the most is the moment of his death, but I was appraised of the plot in the later books (my friend was like, do you want me to tell you? and I was all, please do, I sure as hell won't read it) and apparently he doesn't really die, so ultimately even that little regard was earned under false pretences.
I do not enjoy Dune because I do not enjoy the characters in the Dune. The only one that actually tugged at my heart was the Heit/Gunray Duncan Idaho (EDIT: the one character I didn't completely dislike, and I still got the name wrong) in second book, but you just know nothing good is going to happen to him later, so he's not enough to keep me engaged. When I forget about how much I dislike the characters, I am actually curious about the plot, but, dear heavens above, they're all so unlikeable and I cannot bear with them. There's this mixture of massive hubris and complete pitifulness most of them have that feels to me like a red cloth to the bull. It targets the anger centres of my brain with pinpoint precision. Paul's constant monologue of "this is happening because of me, I am such fucking big deal, and you know I would like to stop it but I know I will fail anyway so nothing matters and I'm just gonna do X, Y and Z because I saw I was gonna do it while high and obviously my precognition powers mean I know best", just makes me go, "well if there's no point in trying then just fuck off!!!".
It's actually really fascinating! The tragedy of precognition! The questions of agency! The struggle against your own fate!
If only the characters didn't push all my rage buttons!
I told my friend that Paul is like a man who is going up the stairs, and the stairs are very clearly labelled "Attic" and after every step he moans how the Attic is the worst, he doesn't wanna go to the Attic, but then takes the next step. And in the end he's standing in the Attic and still moaning about how could this happen to him?!
In conclusion: oh, worm?
So it was notable that I got so frustrated with Dune that I actually decided to stop reading it.
By now, I don't remember the specific passage that made me close the file. I just remember being very frustrated! (I feel like it might have been one of passages about genetics or precognition that made me give up on the book in the end, but I cannot be sure). I was disgruntled, too; Dune was the very first book I stopped reading before getting to the ending. Even if a book was so-so, I would usually read just to find out what happened at the end. But Dune was different.
About a year ago, when the new movie was teased, a friend lend me their copy when I admitted that I never read the whole book. Of course, by then I've forgotten most of the plot, so I started reading from the beginning.
Several times.
Never got far.
The book wasn't all that engaging to me, although I also attribute it to the fact that I'm much busier. I just generally had better things to do than slough through Dune.
In the end, I went to watch the movie without reading the (whole) book. I actually like it just fine! The music and scenery were VERY good. I loved the mood and the vibes. Afterwards, I had a feeling like not much happened, which objectively is not true, but the movie has that vibe. There seems to be a lot of stillness, a sense of waiting. (It is also very dark, literally. In cinema it's not so bad, but there are scenes that should have some more light so you can clearly see what is happening). I will go see the second one for sure.
But it's very much a movie I like to be looking at, specifically. Which brings me to my final attempt to get through the book.
My friend, bless her, suggested I listen to audiobook and gave me hers. So I finally listened to the whole book. And the second one, just to make sure.
Nine years later, I can give the final verdict:
I do not enjoy Dune.
The funny thing is, intellectually, I do feel there is a lot of interesting things! A lot of thing I very much enjoy discussing - the world-building and the moral and philosophical dilemmas presented in the text especially. But as interesting as those aspects are, the real stumbling blocks for me are the characters.
Ending of the second book beautifully encapsulates my feelings toward Paul. There is a point in the later half second book where Paul goes to a secret meeting. I was either not listening closely enough, or missed something, but (spoiler alert) Paul by that time is foreseeing his own death; so I though he would die during the meeting and the rest of the audiobook will be probably fallout from his death. When everything happened and Paul was injured but survived, my gut reaction was a betrayed, But you were supposed to die!
Obviously, by that point I had enough of Paul. Over the span of two books he failed to ender himself to me, or have my sympathize with his position. The moment where I like him the most is the moment of his death, but I was appraised of the plot in the later books (my friend was like, do you want me to tell you? and I was all, please do, I sure as hell won't read it) and apparently he doesn't really die, so ultimately even that little regard was earned under false pretences.
I do not enjoy Dune because I do not enjoy the characters in the Dune. The only one that actually tugged at my heart was the Heit/
It's actually really fascinating! The tragedy of precognition! The questions of agency! The struggle against your own fate!
If only the characters didn't push all my rage buttons!
I told my friend that Paul is like a man who is going up the stairs, and the stairs are very clearly labelled "Attic" and after every step he moans how the Attic is the worst, he doesn't wanna go to the Attic, but then takes the next step. And in the end he's standing in the Attic and still moaning about how could this happen to him?!
In conclusion: oh, worm?
the people behind the characters
Aug. 2nd, 2021 01:06 amA side-effect of getting into Chinese dramas (a grand total of two so far, The Untamed and Word of Honor) and following tumblrs that reblog the related content is unintentionally getting exposed to how cdrama fandom interacts with the actors and how actors interact with the fandom; including their own fans.
The thing is, my usual approach to the people making content - especially actors - is to studiously ignore them. In my mind, the cast was always put at the same level as the creators of the work - The Powers That Be with which you don't interact and they don't interact with us, and we can comfortably co-exist with plausible deniability. They do their Wholesome Publicity at the General Populace to sell the thing, while we can write our smutty fanfic in peace.
Mind, one of my formative experiences were the ripples of the "someone gave Sherlock cast a smutty fanfic to read in public" drama which, ouch. I can still feel the second-hand embarrassment a decade later.
This attitude is also why I personally never vibed with RPF, almost to the point where I would consider it a squick. It's probably because in my mind, I do not divorce the public persona from the real person in they way people do it when engaging in RPF. It's like using the real name is a magic invocation; it will always have me thinking that whatever the Public Persona is, it is a subset - or a fake decoy - of a Real Person, whom I do not know in any meaningful way, whose opinions and thoughts I cannot begin to speculate on, and subsequently I am supremely uninterested in.
All the discourse about relationship between the creator and the creation in the last few years aside (of the "can you enjoy HP if JKR is a TERF" variety), I had always very strong gut reaction when it comes to how far my comfort zone extended when it comes to creator interaction.
If I saw the author of my favourite book in the shop? I would ignore them.
If I went to library where the author is doing a signing and invites questions about the book? That's fine.
Am I interested in political leanings of the singer performing my favourite song of the week? Absolutely not.
Would I read an interview about what inspired the lyrics to the song - even if it's about their private life? Eh, probably.
The actors are in unique position, because they are a co-creators of the work and the character, they are highly visible and they can generate a lot of profit if they do the public tour right. Which makes me circle back to cdramas and weibo updates.
Seeing weibo updates on my dash was something which, or course, made me automatically hit the J key to skip the post, because it is precisely the type of content I do not want to interact with. This is the fun thing after spending a few years in one fandom and achieving the fine-tuned tumblr dash of people who post and reblog things which are almost entirely to my tastes (hello, Star Wars) and then branching out into a new one. As you are following new people, you get exposed to the type of stuff you didn't know about or avoided in the past, and you begin the fine-tuning anew.
But ah, the weibo updates. After I scrolled past, they made me pause and think about my own reaction.
Again, did I watch even one of these weibo updates? No. Did I read a post about the public reception to a show and the drama surrounding it? Absolutely. (Specifically, it was about how Word of Honor totally subverted expectations, getting really popular after a very "meh" response to casting and leaks and another one expanding on the casting and the surrounding drama).
There is a particular quote about one of the actors in the second post linked above that makes me vigorously chew on this topic:
"(...) he’s had at least two girlfriends before and he’s known for not performing fanservice with his costars."
I am looking carefully out of corner of my eye and I'm wondering why I have much stronger knee-jerk response to those weibo updates than to gifsets of Tom Hiddleston and that other actor discussing their characters in the new "Loki" show (I also scroll past these, just at slightly slower pace). Am I more inured to western actors and their rigmarole? I was in MCU fandom back in 2012, maybe Hiddleston is just old news to me?
There is plenty drama about personal lives of western stars and there is plenty of fanservice on tours (obviously MCU cast, and I vaguely remember people getting excited about the guys playing Magneto and Prof X in the XMFC). However, as I read that short post, the concept of having a personal life and not being enthusiastic about fanservice having a significant impact on the life of the actor is staggering me a bit. It seems to me that actors in cdramas - and probably kdramas too - are expected to promote not only their show, but also themselves (the other thing beside the weibo updates are ads photoshots and vids). It revealed to me that the position of idol (something I associated solely with boybands so far) and the position of actor might get merged into an unholy amalgamation together with being a model and influencer and youtube personality, and - it's too much. They just appear too accessible, and they seem to be obliged to be accessible to a very demanding fanbase which embodies the worst traits of an internet mob, with bonus real life mode.
And to think, this is China. People make light of their censorship, but at the end of the daybehind the Iron Curtain this is not really a joke, this is a very real regime. It's a mystery to me how the culture of actor-idol developed when it is such volatile and precarious position in light of the political climate in the country. I'm not gonna lie, I know very little about the intricacies of life in China. A the same time I am sitting next to several bookshelves full of old books I inherited from my parents; a lot of them are censored by communist government. I've got a great brick of an old Soviet encyclopedia, where there is no entry for "liberal democracy", but there is an entry for "bourgeois democracy", and it takes care to note that "due to class-based system, the rights and freedoms of the citizens in most cases exist only nominally". I might be projecting a bit.
This ended up in a different place from I would expect, but I think I answered my own question. My ideal of the fandom experience is one not infringed upon by creators, and in perfect world the reverse is also true: the creators, both in their work and life, are not imposed on by the fandom. But the work still has to have an audience, and the bigger fan engagement, the more profitable it is. What drives fan engagement? Fanservice. And if an actor has and cultivates an active fanbase for themselves, the more valuable they are as a resource for your show or film. Thus, the draw in not a character an actor plays, but the "real" person, the idol.
Consequently, the weibo update, and me, aggressively avoiding thinking about the implications of the upsetting behind-the-scenes workings of the idol culture.
The thing is, my usual approach to the people making content - especially actors - is to studiously ignore them. In my mind, the cast was always put at the same level as the creators of the work - The Powers That Be with which you don't interact and they don't interact with us, and we can comfortably co-exist with plausible deniability. They do their Wholesome Publicity at the General Populace to sell the thing, while we can write our smutty fanfic in peace.
Mind, one of my formative experiences were the ripples of the "someone gave Sherlock cast a smutty fanfic to read in public" drama which, ouch. I can still feel the second-hand embarrassment a decade later.
This attitude is also why I personally never vibed with RPF, almost to the point where I would consider it a squick. It's probably because in my mind, I do not divorce the public persona from the real person in they way people do it when engaging in RPF. It's like using the real name is a magic invocation; it will always have me thinking that whatever the Public Persona is, it is a subset - or a fake decoy - of a Real Person, whom I do not know in any meaningful way, whose opinions and thoughts I cannot begin to speculate on, and subsequently I am supremely uninterested in.
All the discourse about relationship between the creator and the creation in the last few years aside (of the "can you enjoy HP if JKR is a TERF" variety), I had always very strong gut reaction when it comes to how far my comfort zone extended when it comes to creator interaction.
If I saw the author of my favourite book in the shop? I would ignore them.
If I went to library where the author is doing a signing and invites questions about the book? That's fine.
Am I interested in political leanings of the singer performing my favourite song of the week? Absolutely not.
Would I read an interview about what inspired the lyrics to the song - even if it's about their private life? Eh, probably.
The actors are in unique position, because they are a co-creators of the work and the character, they are highly visible and they can generate a lot of profit if they do the public tour right. Which makes me circle back to cdramas and weibo updates.
Seeing weibo updates on my dash was something which, or course, made me automatically hit the J key to skip the post, because it is precisely the type of content I do not want to interact with. This is the fun thing after spending a few years in one fandom and achieving the fine-tuned tumblr dash of people who post and reblog things which are almost entirely to my tastes (hello, Star Wars) and then branching out into a new one. As you are following new people, you get exposed to the type of stuff you didn't know about or avoided in the past, and you begin the fine-tuning anew.
But ah, the weibo updates. After I scrolled past, they made me pause and think about my own reaction.
Again, did I watch even one of these weibo updates? No. Did I read a post about the public reception to a show and the drama surrounding it? Absolutely. (Specifically, it was about how Word of Honor totally subverted expectations, getting really popular after a very "meh" response to casting and leaks and another one expanding on the casting and the surrounding drama).
There is a particular quote about one of the actors in the second post linked above that makes me vigorously chew on this topic:
"(...) he’s had at least two girlfriends before and he’s known for not performing fanservice with his costars."
I am looking carefully out of corner of my eye and I'm wondering why I have much stronger knee-jerk response to those weibo updates than to gifsets of Tom Hiddleston and that other actor discussing their characters in the new "Loki" show (I also scroll past these, just at slightly slower pace). Am I more inured to western actors and their rigmarole? I was in MCU fandom back in 2012, maybe Hiddleston is just old news to me?
There is plenty drama about personal lives of western stars and there is plenty of fanservice on tours (obviously MCU cast, and I vaguely remember people getting excited about the guys playing Magneto and Prof X in the XMFC). However, as I read that short post, the concept of having a personal life and not being enthusiastic about fanservice having a significant impact on the life of the actor is staggering me a bit. It seems to me that actors in cdramas - and probably kdramas too - are expected to promote not only their show, but also themselves (the other thing beside the weibo updates are ads photoshots and vids). It revealed to me that the position of idol (something I associated solely with boybands so far) and the position of actor might get merged into an unholy amalgamation together with being a model and influencer and youtube personality, and - it's too much. They just appear too accessible, and they seem to be obliged to be accessible to a very demanding fanbase which embodies the worst traits of an internet mob, with bonus real life mode.
And to think, this is China. People make light of their censorship, but at the end of the day
This ended up in a different place from I would expect, but I think I answered my own question. My ideal of the fandom experience is one not infringed upon by creators, and in perfect world the reverse is also true: the creators, both in their work and life, are not imposed on by the fandom. But the work still has to have an audience, and the bigger fan engagement, the more profitable it is. What drives fan engagement? Fanservice. And if an actor has and cultivates an active fanbase for themselves, the more valuable they are as a resource for your show or film. Thus, the draw in not a character an actor plays, but the "real" person, the idol.
Consequently, the weibo update, and me, aggressively avoiding thinking about the implications of the upsetting behind-the-scenes workings of the idol culture.
Over on the blue tumblr hell, I reblogged two posts discussing SW fandom:
The first is When Systemic Hatred of Women Online Goes Unnoticed, What Does it Say About Us? by Katie McCort (Data Analysist).
The second is Racism in the Star Wars fandom: The Tumblr Years by tumblr user diversehighfantasy.
The first article is an analysis of content pulled from social media - mainly tweets - attacking supporters of Reylo; what tactics are used to drum up the outrage and fling abuse at shippers. The second is a more general overview of the way Sequel Trilogy fandom developed on tumblr, especially the shipping fandom, and how ships involving Finn were sidelined in favour of outsopken Reylo majority.
It made me think of related issue: they way we (the collective, nebulous "we" of fandom at large) invest our energy into those big ship wars, these purity culture witch hunts, into the massive ongoing discussion of why is this happening... to the detriment of actual fannish activity.
Perhaps it's just my own impression, so let me tell you about what I was doing: I got into SW in 2015, a few months before TFA premiere. Despite the Sequel Trilogy just kicking off, I fell more with the Prequel crowd, because they're chill and fun people who don't take themselves too seriously. Not to mention The Clone Wars cartoon is probably much more my speed when it comes to media than the main movies. So off writing crack and shitposting I went.
I'm something of a fandom serial monogamist, so around the time of TLJ premiere my interest in SW was waning. The hype around the conclusion of MCU was strong, and I got sucked back into Avengers for a long bit. But the other contributing factor was that TLJ didn't manage to grab my attention and revitalize my interest; again, I was more into Prequels era, but also the fandom just wasn't that fun to participate in at that point.
Main thing for me was, I think, the atmosphere after TLJ was just different than the experience I had after TFA.
I went back chronologically through about third of my SW tumblr tag, a time period of roughly a year (from mid 2015 to mid 2016). And I legitimately forgot how much fun people had with TFA content. There was a lot of Finnpoe art! Cute Finnrey posts! Fun cracky ideas being thrown around, silly memes, wonderful gifsets, some great meta. At this point I was neither into Reylo or Kylux, but people were certainly having a blast with these too.
Sure, there was wank, there were angry posts, at that point outrage against the idea of Reylo was just starting to get some real traction. But you COULD find things to enjoy inbetween.
After TLJ? Well, there was still content, but the discourse around it was ever present, and discouraging to the extreme. I reblogged a few memes - exponentially less than I had during TFA. To me, it seemed fandom was more invested in arguing about the movie. Sure, my own disappointment was a big factor, but since I wasn't interested in going on and on about my grieviances, I felt like there was nothing else to do, and I moved on.
I wonder how many other fans did the same. It's the right choice to remove yourself from fandom space if it stops being fun, that's how you fandom responsibly. But the inevitable side effect of people uninterested in contributing to wank getting the hell out of dodge is the fact that suddenly there is a lot less buffer between the angry troll mob and their target (in this case - people shipping Reylo, who had a lot of content to enjoy and explore in TLJ).
I feel like I'm ready to get back into SW fandom at this point, but I'm still getting back mainly into Prequel content (wonder how much drama there will be with the new TCW episodes coming out...). I was actually largely ok with the TROS, mainly thanks to the fact that I took a step back after TLJ and wasn't overinvested in it.
Do I think the Sequel Trilogy could be better? Well, yeah, sure. Do I think the Prequels received about the same amount of vitrol back when they came out? Well, it's excellently documented they did. Do I wish there was less wank in the Sequels fandom so we could actually enjoy it despite the flaws?
Looking back... I suppose in another fifteeen years, after most of trolls get tired of the discourse, we'll be ready to write fun cracky AUs about Sequels too.
The first is When Systemic Hatred of Women Online Goes Unnoticed, What Does it Say About Us? by Katie McCort (Data Analysist).
The second is Racism in the Star Wars fandom: The Tumblr Years by tumblr user diversehighfantasy.
The first article is an analysis of content pulled from social media - mainly tweets - attacking supporters of Reylo; what tactics are used to drum up the outrage and fling abuse at shippers. The second is a more general overview of the way Sequel Trilogy fandom developed on tumblr, especially the shipping fandom, and how ships involving Finn were sidelined in favour of outsopken Reylo majority.
It made me think of related issue: they way we (the collective, nebulous "we" of fandom at large) invest our energy into those big ship wars, these purity culture witch hunts, into the massive ongoing discussion of why is this happening... to the detriment of actual fannish activity.
Perhaps it's just my own impression, so let me tell you about what I was doing: I got into SW in 2015, a few months before TFA premiere. Despite the Sequel Trilogy just kicking off, I fell more with the Prequel crowd, because they're chill and fun people who don't take themselves too seriously. Not to mention The Clone Wars cartoon is probably much more my speed when it comes to media than the main movies. So off writing crack and shitposting I went.
I'm something of a fandom serial monogamist, so around the time of TLJ premiere my interest in SW was waning. The hype around the conclusion of MCU was strong, and I got sucked back into Avengers for a long bit. But the other contributing factor was that TLJ didn't manage to grab my attention and revitalize my interest; again, I was more into Prequels era, but also the fandom just wasn't that fun to participate in at that point.
Main thing for me was, I think, the atmosphere after TLJ was just different than the experience I had after TFA.
I went back chronologically through about third of my SW tumblr tag, a time period of roughly a year (from mid 2015 to mid 2016). And I legitimately forgot how much fun people had with TFA content. There was a lot of Finnpoe art! Cute Finnrey posts! Fun cracky ideas being thrown around, silly memes, wonderful gifsets, some great meta. At this point I was neither into Reylo or Kylux, but people were certainly having a blast with these too.
Sure, there was wank, there were angry posts, at that point outrage against the idea of Reylo was just starting to get some real traction. But you COULD find things to enjoy inbetween.
After TLJ? Well, there was still content, but the discourse around it was ever present, and discouraging to the extreme. I reblogged a few memes - exponentially less than I had during TFA. To me, it seemed fandom was more invested in arguing about the movie. Sure, my own disappointment was a big factor, but since I wasn't interested in going on and on about my grieviances, I felt like there was nothing else to do, and I moved on.
I wonder how many other fans did the same. It's the right choice to remove yourself from fandom space if it stops being fun, that's how you fandom responsibly. But the inevitable side effect of people uninterested in contributing to wank getting the hell out of dodge is the fact that suddenly there is a lot less buffer between the angry troll mob and their target (in this case - people shipping Reylo, who had a lot of content to enjoy and explore in TLJ).
I feel like I'm ready to get back into SW fandom at this point, but I'm still getting back mainly into Prequel content (wonder how much drama there will be with the new TCW episodes coming out...). I was actually largely ok with the TROS, mainly thanks to the fact that I took a step back after TLJ and wasn't overinvested in it.
Do I think the Sequel Trilogy could be better? Well, yeah, sure. Do I think the Prequels received about the same amount of vitrol back when they came out? Well, it's excellently documented they did. Do I wish there was less wank in the Sequels fandom so we could actually enjoy it despite the flaws?
Looking back... I suppose in another fifteeen years, after most of trolls get tired of the discourse, we'll be ready to write fun cracky AUs about Sequels too.
So I saw the new Star Wars movie
Dec. 19th, 2019 04:33 am
SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT PEOPLE
First off: I went to a marathon of the whole sequel trilogy with my friends, and I’m glad that I did, because I forgot A LOT.
( Read more... )
that post (about the way ABO universe is constructed by Japanese writers who have nationalised health care VS American writers who… very much don’t) now made me think: how does nationality/culture affects the popular fanfic tropes in a fandom?
Like, if we take for example MCU, what fics AUs are most popular in Japanese fics? In Spanish fics? What charcters interpretations are the most popular, and how are they different from those appearing most in fics written by authors who are native English speakers? And even then, is there a noticeable difference between US, UK, Australian writers and so on?
Did anybody do a study on it and where can I read it?
I suspect there are whole genres of fics a lot of us don’t even know exist, just because their setting and plot is dependednt on cultural context that is not known widely outsite of native writers.
Like, if US popculture wasn’t such a big export, western could be a pretty niche genre. The specific setting is a big part of it.
I don’t actually read a lot of fic in my native language (which is a shame, now I think about it). But back when I did, in the Harry Potter fandom, there were a few fic types that might’ve been specific to Polish writers.
The boarding school style education is not very popular here, for example. Especially for little kids at 11yo. You MIGHT go to student boarding house for your middle school education, if your school is in a big city and you live far away. But for most definitions of “far away” here you’d be able to easily go back to your parents’ on weekends anyway. The works about students’ and teachers’ daily lives in Hogwarts had a slightly different flavour when written in Polish fandom, influenced by the way education system works here.
The Marauders’ Era fics - especially those focusing on the war - also had some of that “Polish guerrilla during WWII occupation” feel to them. There were also future “second war goes badly” fics where HP era characters would be adults, fighting for years already, frequently from abroad, while Voldemort took over UK and had his dystopian goverment going on (Communist era in Central-Eastern Europe anyone?).
Not specific to HP fandom, but the roadtrip fic HAS a very different form/setting! A Soviet Roadtrip is definitely a separate subgenre. The premise is mostly the same, but the Troublesome Roadtrip Through Communist Country HAS to be in an old, communist era car, which is always on the verge on breakdown. The roads are all bad. The characters contemplate their lives, which are hard, and full of absurd situations, and made even harder by seemingly pointless inconvenieces of Living Here. The character arcs usually don’t lead to heroes overcoming their problemsm, changing themselves and improving their lives, but finding the strenght to go on in spite of their situation. Which again, is a very “living under communist goverment” mindset.
Perhaps the closest you can come to experience this atmosphere is in Witcher 3 game, actually! (And it’s probably the most Polish coded cultural export that got popular in English-speaking communities, so). It’s medieval fantasy setting, but I think Velen peasants attitudes toward their situation would translate very well when applied to Polish citizens under communist goverment era.
I would love for other people to give their own examples of such works!
Like, if we take for example MCU, what fics AUs are most popular in Japanese fics? In Spanish fics? What charcters interpretations are the most popular, and how are they different from those appearing most in fics written by authors who are native English speakers? And even then, is there a noticeable difference between US, UK, Australian writers and so on?
Did anybody do a study on it and where can I read it?
I suspect there are whole genres of fics a lot of us don’t even know exist, just because their setting and plot is dependednt on cultural context that is not known widely outsite of native writers.
Like, if US popculture wasn’t such a big export, western could be a pretty niche genre. The specific setting is a big part of it.
I don’t actually read a lot of fic in my native language (which is a shame, now I think about it). But back when I did, in the Harry Potter fandom, there were a few fic types that might’ve been specific to Polish writers.
The boarding school style education is not very popular here, for example. Especially for little kids at 11yo. You MIGHT go to student boarding house for your middle school education, if your school is in a big city and you live far away. But for most definitions of “far away” here you’d be able to easily go back to your parents’ on weekends anyway. The works about students’ and teachers’ daily lives in Hogwarts had a slightly different flavour when written in Polish fandom, influenced by the way education system works here.
The Marauders’ Era fics - especially those focusing on the war - also had some of that “Polish guerrilla during WWII occupation” feel to them. There were also future “second war goes badly” fics where HP era characters would be adults, fighting for years already, frequently from abroad, while Voldemort took over UK and had his dystopian goverment going on (Communist era in Central-Eastern Europe anyone?).
Not specific to HP fandom, but the roadtrip fic HAS a very different form/setting! A Soviet Roadtrip is definitely a separate subgenre. The premise is mostly the same, but the Troublesome Roadtrip Through Communist Country HAS to be in an old, communist era car, which is always on the verge on breakdown. The roads are all bad. The characters contemplate their lives, which are hard, and full of absurd situations, and made even harder by seemingly pointless inconvenieces of Living Here. The character arcs usually don’t lead to heroes overcoming their problemsm, changing themselves and improving their lives, but finding the strenght to go on in spite of their situation. Which again, is a very “living under communist goverment” mindset.
Perhaps the closest you can come to experience this atmosphere is in Witcher 3 game, actually! (And it’s probably the most Polish coded cultural export that got popular in English-speaking communities, so). It’s medieval fantasy setting, but I think Velen peasants attitudes toward their situation would translate very well when applied to Polish citizens under communist goverment era.
I would love for other people to give their own examples of such works!
Easing back
Nov. 26th, 2019 11:48 amA while ago a friend made a comment that tumblr is noticeably slowing down, that folks are leaving. It startled me--I honestly didn't notice, mostly due to the fact that I myself have less time to spend online nowadays. But when I started paying attention, I noticed she's right.
We talked briefly about where we expect fandom to move on. The consensus was that it'll probably splinter off into smaller hubbubs for a bit. I complained some about Discord. Don't get me wrong, I use it, and I mostly like it, but it's a bit too much to keep up with for me on daily basis (am I getting old??).
The thing about the chat format, is that it moves faster than microblogging, and there are a billion channels, then sub channels, and if I want to be up to date with everything going on, then I would have to read all of it... tl;dr it's just not optimal for me. A discord channel with me and my three friends where we post memes, talk shit with each other and discuss recs is ideal. If a discord has about hundred members? I just lurk, because if I wanted to engage, I would feel obliged to keep up with the conversation; to read that 345 messages in the backlog every day, and, yeah, no.
Tumblr hemorraging money reached a memetic status, but privately I think it will have real consequences (eventually). I guess the point of this post is--I want to ease back into Dreamwidth. I think this is where I will retreat to. At a time when Verizon is purging old Yahoo groups, Tumblr exists in weird limbo of uncertainty and Discord it too chaotic, this seems just about perfect.
I hope to post more here, to get into habit of doing it (I'm a lazy lurker at heart, after all... it probably won't be easy). Reblogging takes much less effort, so my tumblr will proably continue to be more active for a while yet, though.
We talked briefly about where we expect fandom to move on. The consensus was that it'll probably splinter off into smaller hubbubs for a bit. I complained some about Discord. Don't get me wrong, I use it, and I mostly like it, but it's a bit too much to keep up with for me on daily basis (am I getting old??).
The thing about the chat format, is that it moves faster than microblogging, and there are a billion channels, then sub channels, and if I want to be up to date with everything going on, then I would have to read all of it... tl;dr it's just not optimal for me. A discord channel with me and my three friends where we post memes, talk shit with each other and discuss recs is ideal. If a discord has about hundred members? I just lurk, because if I wanted to engage, I would feel obliged to keep up with the conversation; to read that 345 messages in the backlog every day, and, yeah, no.
Tumblr hemorraging money reached a memetic status, but privately I think it will have real consequences (eventually). I guess the point of this post is--I want to ease back into Dreamwidth. I think this is where I will retreat to. At a time when Verizon is purging old Yahoo groups, Tumblr exists in weird limbo of uncertainty and Discord it too chaotic, this seems just about perfect.
I hope to post more here, to get into habit of doing it (I'm a lazy lurker at heart, after all... it probably won't be easy). Reblogging takes much less effort, so my tumblr will proably continue to be more active for a while yet, though.
(no subject)
Dec. 5th, 2018 08:29 pmBut seriously, on the whole? I’m gonna miss this place when it finally enters it’s final FINAL FINAL death throes, because for all of its faults, all of its shitty design, Tumblr was undoubtedly great platform in one respect at least: the micro-blogging format here was ideal for lurkers.
Reblogging coupled with the unique style of tag-comments the fandom developed here suddenly made visible the big chains of lurkers who normally don’t interact with the work or its creator directly, but they pass it along in their own little circles, putting up your content up in their own spaces, adding all these heartwarming tags like “it’s great!!”, “omg i love u” or “i’d read that”s.
I create sometimes, when the mood strikes, but I was always mostly a lurker, actually! Especially back on LJ.
I’m old enough for my ancient, defunct LJ account with less than 10 entries to be still floating out there somewhere, and old enough that migrating to DW is less painful due to nostalgia factor. Yet, it is a nostalgia factor brought on mostly by the fact that for years, LJ was primary place to lurk on!
After clicking through all the “yep I’m old enough to view those entries :) :) :)” buttons on the way, of course.
((The image below: old-school “Lurker Day” LJ/DW banner, one of many you can still find out there - this one’s from soc-puppet.dreamwidth.org))
A Thing Long Overdue
Dec. 3rd, 2018 11:13 pm Why hello everyone! Backlit by most recent tumblrpocalypse, I can now be found here as well. Some crossposting will probably follow.
