Snowflake Challenge #3 and #5

[chacusha]

Challenge #3: In your own space, talk about a fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time.


Hm, well, I think when I was younger, I was much less chill about ship wars, and especially had a bit of an overinflated sense of the connection between (1) "proving" that my ship would be the best ship to become canon (accomplished via getting into arguments on the internet) and (2) my preferred ship actually becoming canon.

One thing that kind of haunts me is that I have a really really old Soulcalibur fansite that I made when I was in high school, and I talk about my favorite ship (which was and still is extremely fandom-unpopular). The much more popular rival ship had an age gap of 18 vs. 15 while my ship had an age gap of 23 vs. 18, and I had this sidenote on my website talking about how if you don't like the 23 vs. 18 age gap, the 18 vs. 15 age gap isn't better (i.e. is statutory) and I just boggle when I read it because (1) was I actually arguing with people who were chewing my OTP out for its age gap as a reason they don't ship it (plausibly so, but I just can't remember anymore)? And (2) even if I was, why did I think this argument would change people's mind...? (The canon takes place in the 1590s, by the way.)

When I read this decades later, it makes me think that if I had come of age on the internet ~5 years later than I actually did, I probably would have been an anti, to be honest. There's a certain kind of person on the internet that is just like, "The anti phenomenon is just young people being young, fandom has always been crazy, it's just ship wars under another name, there's nothing new to see here," and that's... kinda right in the sense that I do think teenagers tend to be much more extreme/black-and-white in their thinking and it IS ship wars under another name, and fandom is always kinda crazy, but I also think it's eliding the fact that the anti phenomenon was bizarre in a truly unprecedented way (also, it's not just limited to ships either, but is also about characters, attraction, kink, etc., so yes, the anti phenomenon *is* about ship wars but it isn't *only* or even mainly about ship wars). So yeah, I do think if I had been 5 years younger than I am, I would have gone through an anti phase, but notably, I did not, because the fandom environment I came of age in was completely different from the one that generated antis 5-10 years later, and growing up on the version of the internet that I did actually made me a bit more chill and normal as a teenager than I would have been otherwise (and also getting older has made me more chill and normal than I was when I was a teenager).

Related to avoiding ship wars and trying to rationalize my ships as the "better" choice for a character, I am much more cautious nowadays about "punching down" when it comes to ships that conflict with my own. Like, if I ship the most popular pairing in a fandom, I try to be more polite and supportive in public of people who ship rarepairs and generally, like, avoid shitting on pairings that aren't super popular in the first place. Looking back at the time when I was a teenager modding a forum, I don't think I was particularly tactful towards people who shipped pairings that were obviously not the ones that were going to be canon and I would probably take a different approach nowadays.

This is why I tend to be very restrained about my Kira/Odo opinions in public, because even though it's canon and even though I could write essays about how I think the Kira/Odo plotlines in DS9 distorted both Kira and Odo's characterization (despite there being things I like about the pairing too), I know that Quodo is by far both the most popular Quark pairing and the most popular Odo pairing in DS9 fandom, so I try to keep my negative Kira/Odo thoughts to myself except when it's relevant to a discussion or I'm talking to like-minded people. I think it's hard enough being a Kira/Odo shipper in a fandom that doesn't really give you much content for it without random strangers ranting about how badly it was executed in canon and how Quark and Odo are way better matches for each other or whatever.

(Also, just kind of a note, it's interesting to me that when I look on DeviantArt, Kira/Odo is more popular among old art. I think it's a pairing that was probably pretty popular while DS9 was airing but has been thoroughly displaced by Quodo as the fan-popular Odo pairing at this point -- must be a doubly-disappointing situation for people who are Kira/Odo shippers, I'm guessing.)

So yeah, an opinion that has changed over time for me is the value of ship wars and fighting about which ship is "better" for the characters or whatever in public.




Challenge #5: Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom.


This is a neat question! I like reading people's answers. So many things to say -- for one thing, I think my skills (art, writing, etc.) have improved a lot because of fandom. I'm mainly only inspired to do art or to write because of fandom, and all that practice over the years has definitely strengthened my skills beyond what I would have thought possible 10-20 years ago. I think this also applies to my nonfiction writing/journaling too -- I feel like I've become better at using this journal to help me with my projects and my work and just untangle my thoughts, and I don't think I would be able to do that without fandom? I think one of the neatest aspects of fandom is that it provides a space for amateur artists to hone their craft in a supportive environment. Which doesn't seem like a necessary or core aspect of fandom, but fandom for some reason tends to create this environment, and I really appreciate it!

Fandom has also helped me make internet friends who have just helped me in immeasurable ways -- getting to read about other people's life experiences by reading their posts, getting advice on life problems, getting to be enthusiastic about media that no one else I know IRL has any idea of, etc.!

So yeah, I just feel like fandom has improved my life in a lot of small ways.

Comments

[chacusha]

(Sorry for the late reply!)

Yeah, I definitely see some parallels between anti-culture and what fandom was like before that (things like ship warring, fans being dicks to each other, and the difficulty striking a balance between expressing your honest opinions and not starting unwanted fights with people -- these things are perennial in fandom). But there was a definite culture shift when the anti phenomenon arose, and fandom still hasn't returned to what it was like in pre-anti times, IMO.

And yeah, I have my fair share of rarepairs and ships that do not have a chance of becoming canon, but I too also feel like the act of "shipping" is really closely tied to wanting a ship to become canon or be "validated" by canon (even in those rarepair/clearly-NOT-what-canon-is-going-for cases!) -- those two things are just basically always linked for me even if that doesn't have to be the case more generally. I can see how, if you already gravitate toward liking/preferring the obvious/main/canon or to-be-canon ship, that link between "I ship it" and "I think this will be canon" and "I think this SHOULD be canon" and "why would you ship anything else?" would be even stronger.

Maybe it's just my psychology, but I don't know if I was ever emulating older people -- I think I was just always kind of naturally argumentative/competitive about ships, because I just didn't really have any self-awareness about how easy it is to stretch arguments into something kind of arbitrary and bad-faith so that your preferred ship comes out looking like the best pairing. And then seeing antis drive that tendency off a cliff (e.g. "this 3-year age gap is problematic" "this anthropomorphic gem is minor-coded" "shipping this mentor/mentee ship normalizes abuse" etc. etc.) made me go "holy shit -- you can apparently play this 'it's so problematic' game for any pairing, and it's not a good use of anyone's time," in a way that made me look at my own past behavior in a different, negative light. But now that you say it, in this phase of my life (teens) I think I largely hung out with people my same age and EVERYONE was as argumentative about ships as I was, so while I wasn't emulating older people, I do think you're right that the fact that everyone was doing it did make it seem more okay. Because of antis, people nowadays probably have more awareness that this behavior is kind of self-serving and not particularly valuable, and are more wary about it for that reason.

Thanks for the comment/sharing your thoughts!