something about the whole “fuck authority” outlook that amuses me is that people tend to fall into two incorrect camps. the first assumes that hating authority is something for edgy teens to do and you grow out of it when you reach the fabled “real world.” the second assumes it’s about sticking it to the establishment – government, cops, etc.
but true authority haters know the secret third thing. and that’s that authority is insidious and you have to fuck it everywhere you find it. when you know something is damn well wrong but the doctor tells you it’s fine and you think well i’m no expert – surprise! you have conformed to authority. when you see somebody acting a clown in public and everyone is uncomfortable but nobody says anything – surprise! this too is a form of authority. when you see a consequence and think to yourself “it’s fine, i just won’t do [thing] and then i don’t have to worry about it” you have altered your style of living because of – surprise! authority.
when you tell yourself you can’t be/do x or y because That’s Not How It Works. when you refuse to believe someone’s lived experience because apparently it shouldn’t work like that. when you come up against something outside your understanding and ridicule it or assume it’s a falsehood. guess what’s behind all that! that’s right. someone else’s authority.
we realise this as teens because we’re trapped 24/7 with teachers, parents, and guardians who have ultimate power over us and we recognise the inherent unfairness and injustice of many of their decisions. when we grow older and gain more authority ourselves many forget this fact and either think it’s useless immature teenage rebellion or that the issues we must rebel against grow in proportion to our new responsibilities. we forget about our duty to root it out wherever we find it. and if you don’t start small you’ll never get the big shit. there’s a reason people don’t walk into the gym and start lifting 200lb on their first day.
anyway fuck authority. and before anyone comes at me talking about degrees and experts and “oh so we should just say fuck anyone with any advantage over us?” authority is not to be conflated with experience. experience advises and authority forces. one wants you curious and independent and the other wants you unquestioning and compliant. and that my friend is the difference.
I made paprika chicken and homemade baked rosemary potatoes only to discover I’ve cut them to pretty much the exact same size and cooked them to the same colour. Most fun game of ‘Chicken or Potato’ ever.
okay but there is something disquieting about this urge to cast fan writers as altruists. they give us all this for free!! well, no.
they’re sharing
it’s a key difference in perception. fic isn’t given. it’s shared. it’s part of a fandom community— in which readers are also an integral part.
it’s probably inevitable mission creep from the increasingly transactional nature of the internet and fandom-as-consumerism, which was always gonna happen after corps worked out how much bank there is to make from those weirdo fan people
but like. fandom is sharing. i think we’ve lost that somewhere.
On the rest of the internet, there are creators and there are consumers. Those roles have been, for most of the last ten years, transactional. I put out; you receive. Sometimes you give me money; most of the time, it’s just your attention (which is turned into money by other means).
But fandom doesn’t have consumers; we have readers. And they have forgotten–or maybe they’re new and didn’t know–that they’re an important part of fandom, too. You have a place here, even if you never write or draw or gif or edit. When a creator posts a thing they made, it’s a bid that says, “Look at what I love. Do you love it, too?” And when you reach out to say, “I love it, too,” you’re saying, “Let’s love it together.”
I have watched people get increasingly weird about comments and reblogs on both sides of this argument. And I know why, because I’ve felt the difference, too. When fandom was centralised on Livejournal, we had comment threads on every post, and talking to each other was easy. When we were forced to leave, we scattered, and AO3 was there for our work, but the community was lost.
I took a long break from fandom during the 2010s, and when I came back, I saw a lot of one-way broadcasting and not the same kind of community. Because that’s what the rest of the internet looked like. YouTubers and Twitter comedians and freelance writers just trying to make a living at a dozen different outlets. Which is to say, I understand why fandom is like this now.
But I want to remind you of what it used to be. Some people write fic, and others make rec lists. Some people make gifs, and others write meta essays. Some people know logistics for publishing zines, and others can fill the pages with art. You have a place here along with everyone else, whatever you can do. Find your thing, do your thing, and then reach out to someone else and say, hey, let’s do this thing together.
I’m 43 now. I found fandom in 1996, when I was so obsessed with The X-Files that I needed to more. I read and read and read for years before I ever reached out–by email!–to tell someone I loved what they made. (Lurkers, you too are part of this community!) When I finally worked myself up and posted my first story, someone reached out to me and said, hey, come join us. Let’s do this together.
So I’m reaching out to you because I used to be you. There’s a place for you here. And the way to find your place is to leave a comment on a story you love, reblog a post with tags, send an ask. Fandom is not only fic or fanart or gifs. It’s all of us together.
polyamory really throws a wrench in some harder kink fantasies.
like yeah, I want to abduct you. Keep you prisoner in an abandoned storage locker. Decide on what you wear, eat, manage your entire life. Your family will never know what happened to you - [remembers] - but yeah i guess I’ll like, text your other partners? to let them know where you are. and if they wanna borrow you out for a bit I’ll unchain you and you can like, go out on a date or whatever. yeah no, I’m trying to unlearn toxic monogamy here. You’re like my property but in a non-exclusive sense.
Your captor letting someone borrow you like they would borrow any other object?
