So, you have your ships and they’re awesome. There’s the OTP and they are SO important lashgdflajshdgfajh and you can explain in zillion word essays how perfect they are, and you love them and their love to an insane degree, write massive in-depth metas about how that one look, that one touch there – there is prooooooof look look at the way they look at each other
and there’s the NOTP, and you just cannot remember what it was that turned you off that ship at first… but now you just cannot stand to have it cross your poor innocent eyeballs, what did you do to deserve that, you hate it with a deep and deadly loathing usually reserved for Tony Abbott and arseholes who cut you off in traffic
but for some characters, multishipping really comes into its own – and then some
I call that character the Fandom Little Black Dress – the LBD. The character who you’re thrilled to see shipped with just about anyone. Goes with everything. They look good on everybody. Wash and wear. Good for all occasions. They can be dressed up, or down. You can pair them with flats or heels, leather jackets or diamonds. Or both simultaneously.
how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?
like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’
was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’
sometimes i wonder
oh my GOD
the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print.
here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.
however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around.
but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh).
conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr.
(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.)
I needed to know this.
See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.
Ancient Iliad fandom is intense
Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).
And then there’s this gem from Plato:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus – his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” – Symposium
That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.
More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do
I adore the way fan fiction writers engage with and critique source texts, by manipulating them and breaking their rules. Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text. One tends to think of it as written by total fanboys and fangirls as a kind of worshipful act, but a lot of times you’ll read these stories and it’ll be like ‘What if Star Trek had an openly gay character on the bridge?’ And of course the point is that they don’t, and they wouldn’t, because they don’t have the balls, or they are beholden to their advertisers, or whatever. There’s a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there—which I find fascinating and interesting and cool.
seeing your favorite character’s grossly ooc fandom version
Large fandoms—things like Doctor Who, or Supernatural, or Star Trek, or any superhero comic—tend to have unique and separate sides to them: curative and transformative.
Curative fandom is all about knowledge. It’s about making sure that everything is lined up and in order, knowing how it works, and finding out which one is the best. What is the Doctor Who canon? Who is the best Doctor? How do Weeping Angels work? Etc etc. Curative fandom is p. much the norm on reddit, especially r/gallifrey.
Transformative fandom is about change. Let’s write fic! Let’s make art! Let’s make a fan vid! Let’s cosplay! Let’s somehow change the text. Why is Three easier to ship, while Seven is more difficult? What would happen if ______? Transformative fandom is more or less the norm on tumblr. (And livejournal, and dreamwidth, and fanfiction websites, and…)
Here’s the big thing: there’s a gender split. Find a random male fan, and they’ll probably be in curative fandom. Pick a random transformative fandom-er, and they’ll probably be female. Note that this is phrased in a very particular way—obviously there’s guys who cosplay and write fic, obviously there’s women who don’t. But men tend to be in the curative fandom, while transformative fandom is predominately women—and/or queer people, POC, etc. Why? Because the majority of professionally-made media is catered towards a straight white male demographic, leaving little room for ‘outsiders.’ Outsiders who, if they want to see themselves in media, have to attack it and change it—hence slash fic, hence long essays claiming that Hermione Granger is black, hence canons about trans characters or genderqueer characters.
And then curative/male fandom tends to view most things that transformative/female fandom does with disdain. Why? Because, in their eyes, it devalues canon. Who cares about knowing about Tony Stark’s lovers if somebody’s gonna write a fic where Toni Stark is flying about? Their power is lessened. Scream of the Shalka is unambiguously not canon—but it doesn’t have to be in order for me to read and enjoy a 30k fic where the robotic Master was secretly in the TARDIS during Nine and Ten’s time and they shagged behind the scenes. Canon? No, but who gives a shit?
Also, as transformative fandom tends to be an outsider looking in, they’re much more likely to analyze the work from a queer/PoC/neurodivergent/gender perspective. If I come to /r/gallifrey and start to talk about how ‘In the Forest of the Night’ had a questionable portrayal of mental health/autism, I get blank stare. If I go on tumblr, I get a conversation. This is also where the ‘overreacting, shrieking SJW’ trope plays in, either because of a redditor’s misunderstanding of terms and therefore assuming that a mild critique is a scathing one, or because the tumblr user in question is young/inexperienced and jumping the gun.
So, there you have it: /r/gallifrey’s bashing of reddit is part of a larger split in how men and women tend to enjoy fandom, and a lashing against how fanfiction/related things addresses fandom because it’s not the right “kind” of fandom. And also because tumblr is popular with teenage girls, and there’s nothing reddit loves more than shitting on whatever teenage girls like.
reddit user lordbyonic on the difference between reddit and tumblr fandom
but it also explains WHY fanfic (and the population of people who read it) is largely written by women
So, I got to the bottom of why I was getting such weird comments on a relatively obscure fic of mine—it’s required reading in a class being taught, and one of the assignments is to leave a comment on the required reading which is more critical than constructive so that the professors know students are “engaging” with the texts in a way that isn’t just “YAY I LIKED IT.”
But waldorph, how do you know? Well, one of the teachers of said class commented on my fic, Delilah, which was this week’s required reading, and I was able to track down the syllabus and uncover the assignment which was prompting the flood in my inbox. The comments I received were bizarrely tone-deaf, condescending, rude, and more than that, completely out of step and touch with all fannish norms, and actually prompted me to write a post about concrit and feedback earlier this week. As soon as she explained that it was a class, and that these were fannish-outsiders, it made sense, as opposed to me assuming someone had recc’d it and I was getting way more backlash than usual on a pretty obscure fic. Unfortunately, I dealt with this all week before one of the teachers stepped in, and that was only when I started receiving flaming trolls.
For this reason, I’ve alerted all of the authors listed on the syllabus that they’re about to experience this because, frankly, I would have appreciated a heads up. I’ve also listed them all below, including the weeks that their works will be reviewed. I think that it might be nice if people could spread this around and leave some positive vibes on these works in particular—some of them are pretty well known and some of them aren’t but I think they all equally deserve support from within the community. Additionally, if you know these authors and can contact them directly, please point them in my direction or in the direction of this post and I can provide them with a little more information. I reached out to everyone, but obviously contact information can be out of date.
Ultimately, there’s nothing we can do about people examining works that we never meant to be examined in this way. I think we all have to accept that the way fandom gets interacted with is changing, not just the way that we interact with the rest of the world. I do think that as a community we can and should support each other.
Please signal boost this post so that we can get these authors some good vibes. Obviously we’re into the semester already, so I’ve also included works that have already been through this, please be sure to give them love as well. Links under the cut.
Outside of the whole “A Billion Wicked Thoughts” mess a few years ago, I think this is probably the most inappropriate behavior of academia towards fandom that I’ve seen, especially since I don’t see how this professor could not be in fandom and therefore they should know better.
I’m not in a good (geographical) location to go to town on this right now, but I can spread awareness. Waldorph, I am so sorry this happened to you, and I know everyone appreciates you letting fandom know it’s going on. (Also, Anon who tipped me off, thank you very much!)
I do have connection to some of these authors and I’ve been in touch with one of them, who plans to simply delete the comments as soon as they appear, which I recommend to the other authors on the list — that or locking the fic down for the week in question, I suppose. In theory this will mean there is no viable record of who did and did not submit criticism to the story, and may be the best way to send a very simple “NO. BAD ACA” message to the professor in question.
Jesus bananas, I’m so appalled.
So bloody hell let me say as a professor myself BLOODY HELL what is this person thinking? Let’s put aside the violation of the author’s fan space for a moment because Sci, Sam, and the OP has covered this well. Let’s take a moment to look at REQUIRED READING for a class that contains: Explicit Sex, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Incest, and Rape/Non-Con.
This means some student who signed up for a class on ‘critical engagement with contemporary writing’ or something by that title likely is being told that they have to read Explicit Sex, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Incest, and Rape/Non-Con and comment on it. While I firmly believe that college is a time to push people out of comfort zones and that trigger warnings can be taken to extremes (because usually you can just turn around and avoid it if you need to) those are some potentially heavy things to make a person read.For me I would of gotten to the Rape/Non-Con and noped all the way to the dean’s office and reported the professor. Because BLOODY HELL.
Beyond that how is this even useful to the students without engaging in the material? Do they watch the films/shows first? Do they get a crash course in the history of the fandom before engaging? Because I bet not.
And also if the comments these authors are getting are rude/trolls/flames than that prof IS NOT doing their damn job of teaching students how to crit and shame on them as an instructor. And for gods sakes- move it off of Ao3 and to Blackboard or whatever their school uses. There is a whole built in discussion feature in all of those the students could use.
Honestly from prof to prof I want to shake this person and ask what they don’t understand about how this is wrong. And if that doesn’t work I want to go shake the dean.
Aw Yiss 