As someone whose first fandom experiences were on FF.net, forums, fansites, and AIM chats in the early 2000s, the absolute most important advice I want to give young people in fandom spaces today is this:

Do not put big name fans on a pedestal.

I get it, it's really easy to idolize people who make fanworks and share headcanons you like. But they're people, like you, who happen to really like a thing. They aren't necessarily an authority on that thing, and you shouldn't feel like you have to take every word they say as the gospel truth.

A few years ago I wrote a primer about some previously niche characters in a series I like who happened to gain prominence due to a new game that had come out. It was meant to be a purely informative document to help people new to the characters with finding basic information so they could extrapolate on things in their fanworks. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was a flood of people in my inbox asking me, a stranger, to validate their headcanons and fan interpretations. Every time I did my best to gently explain that this wasn't my job and that they got to interpret the source material how they wanted - it wasn't my place to tell them how to think. As it went on, I quickly made it clear that I didn't want to be involved directly in fandom spaces in this way and I would essentially be sticking to making informative posts about how things worked and could be compared to real world equivalents. Thankfully for me, people slowed down and eventually stopped, but it made me stop and think about how fandom had changed since I was younger - and how in many ways it had stayed the same.

"Big name fan" used to be a pretty neutral term; in fact, it was often a positive one. These were the people organizing zines and conventions and running informative fansites. They were the backbone of fandom spaces. They brought people together. Around the time I was starting to explore fandom as a teenager in the early 2000s, though, it was taking on a different meaning. The big name fans I was seeing were constantly getting into fights and drama (this was called "fandom wank" when it was over things that were inconsequential in real life), and every so often, you'd hear about something actually horrifying that had occurred online in a more private space. Most fandom business, however, was still conducted in the open, on forums and Livejournal and personal websites.

Modern social media caused a huge shift in how fandom operated, and that's a lengthy discussion for another time because it's fascinating in its own right. Fans left Livejournal for Tumblr and Twitter. YouTube video essays began to pop up. People went from making icons to gifsets. On their own, these are neutral changes. The big problem with the shift really has to do with social media algorithms and sharing and how much more frequent it is for people to be able to rise to the top above the rest of a fandom space. Sometimes it's just someone who makes cool art or writes great fics and is chill and likes chatting to other fans about headcanons and the things they like.

And sometimes it becomes almost cult-like.

I had largely stepped away from involvement in fandom spaces around the time this shift was taking place in the early 2010s, because I had determined that I preferred small spaces with a few friends who also liked the same things as me. Given the way fandom often functions now, I'm really glad I did that early, but I don't fault anyone who got swept up in things now. It isn't your fault for not knowing or realizing what you were getting into if something happened to you. I don't really think I can pinpoint one exact moment where the shift happened, but it had definitely begun by 2015, if things I heard from friends who liked Undertale were any indication. Fandom spaces were growing more hostile and about the commodification of fanworks, and thanks to social media making it easier than ever before to share fanworks you liked, it was easier for fans to coalesce around creators they liked, elevating these people into big name fans.

The problem with being a big name fan in today's fandom world is that suddenly all eyes are on you. This creates a hostile environment that goes both ways. Your fans will take your word as gospel, treat your headcanons as canon, and sometimes go as far as to attack other people who don't interpret the source material the same way as you. On the flip side of this, you yourself are also under their intense scrutiny at all times, and if you do anything they deem a misstep, your pedestal will crumble to dust and they'll start attacking you. It's an inherently unhealthy environment for both the BNF and their followers, and it often leads to cult-like social dynamics. This can especially intensify if the fan space moves to a more private location, such as a Discord server. It's really easy for these spaces to become echo chambers, and it's also really easy to isolate people in them - which of course means these spaces become an easy place for abuse to occur. Peer abuse is commonly used against people who step out of line with the belief system, and people are regularly harassed out of spaces or, in even more horrifying cases, emotionally and/or sexually abused, because the relative privacy of a server makes it easier for perpetrators to get access to younger people and isolate them.

It is a deeply unhealthy ecosystem. Fandom isn't supposed to be stressful. Fandom should be a place where you can grow, safely make mistakes, learn, and do better. Growing up, I did see a lot of fighting in fan spaces, but ultimately it wasn't as remotely hostile as things have gotten now, and it's really upsetting.

Some important things you can do to make things safer for yourselves and others, because I've also learned internet safety isn't being taught much anymore either:

I'm not really sure how to conclude this post, but I sincerely hope people can find a safer, happier experience enjoying the things they like with like-minded friends. Discussing something you like with other people who like the thing isn't supposed to be stressful or make you feel bad.

You know what? I'm genuinely curious. Reblog this post and add in the tags which characters your fandom mischaracterizes the most, I'd like to get some data on it.

You can also comment if that's easier for you!

I was working on a post for my autism blog, and whilst writing it, I figured out the easiest way to describe the shift in fandom culture that's occurred within my lifetime.

When I was a young teenager in the early 2000s, fandom was definitely a subculture. You would go to fan sites run by passionate adults, talk to each other on forums, make art and fanfiction and zines, painstakingly work on cosplay...and these were things you would get bullied for in real life if your peers knew. They thought you were a loser for liking these things. Nerds were torn apart in media for liking stuff too much, but in fandom spaces you were allowed to be yourself and talk to other people who liked the same things as you. It wasn't perfect, and of course bad things happened too, but it was much more of a unifying subculture back then.

By the time I was starting grad school in 2013, the year I turned 24, fandom had shifted into a mainstream thing. Corporations realized they could turn a profit with it. Things were being marketed directly towards fandoms. Merchandise was easy to get. And fandom went from being a subculture to being mainstream culture, and it began to reflect mainstream culture as a result.

Modern fandom is more or less just a mirror of what regular culture is like now. It doesn't have its subculture status anymore. It's being purified and sanitized to appeal to the masses.

And frankly, it's pretty alienating.

PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER THE POLL IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PERSONALITY DISORDER. This is specifically for their testimonials.

Personality disorders include:

Cluster A: schizotypal personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder

Cluster B: narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder

Cluster C: obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (separate from obsessive-compulsive disorder), dependent personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder

Additional diagnoses are being considered as well that aren't in the DSM yet, which you can read about here by clicking on them on the Wikipedia sidebar.

In my continuing study of disability and ableism in fandom spaces, based on the preliminary data I've collected from autistic people's experiences I've determined that autistic and autistic-coded characters tend to get one of a few archetypal portrayals in fandom, with these three being the most frequent:

Characters tend to be slotted into one of these three categories, but sometimes people will pick and choose traits from a few of them. Either way, you don't really get to see nuance in fandom spaces these days, and when you see a character who feels like representation you've been seeking only to see the fans treating them as an archetype that stereotypes them instead of as a complex person it causes emotional harm - people are often alienated from fandom spaces because of it.

When you combine it all with the way many fandom spaces feel more like panopticons than fun, creative spaces these days, where people are policing each other and posturing, it doesn't paint a really pretty picture.

I really need to work on a proper survey to send out to people. Hmm.

(Thoughts inspired by this post I reblogged.)

Please reblog for a bigger sample size - this is part of the same project as my earlier polls, which can be seen here! (For extra data, please feel free to mention the character(s) in question in the tags if you've experienced this!)

PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER THE POLL IF YOU ARE NOT ADHD. This is specifically for ADHD people's testimonials.

Please reblog for a bigger sample size - this is part of the same project as my earlier polls! (For extra data, please feel free to mention the character(s) in question in the tags if you've experienced this!)

PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER THE POLL IF YOU ARE NOT AUTISTIC. This is specifically for autistic people's testimonials.

Please reblog this to increase sample size! This is for the same project as my last poll, linked here.

The Results Are In!

One week ago, I did a little poll as an experiment. This poll's results will be incorporated into a larger project I'm working on regarding disability and ableism in fandom spaces.

In the poll, I asked a simple yes or no question - have you ever seen ableism in fandom spaces?

A resounding 87.2% of the 1,173 voters said they had, with many of them sharing stories in the tags or even sending me messages about what they'd witnessed or personally experienced. The results paint a grim picture of fandom spaces as hostile places for disabled people, regardless of what the disability actually is. Some of the stories touched on physical disabilities, like blindness, mobility aid users (in particular ambulatory wheelchair users), and people (and characters) with limb differences and prosthetics. Others were about mental disabilities, such as various neurodivergencies and mental health issues, with autism being mentioned most frequently but with plenty of mentions of personality disorders, psychosis, memory loss, traumatic brain injuries, ADHD, systems, and at least one mention of OCD/intrusive thoughts.

Many responders pointed out that a lot of things in online fandom spaces are inaccessible to them because people post things without using alt text to describe the images or don't transcribe images with text in them. This is an issue that can be easily remedied on an individual level but will be more difficult to implement on a broader level unless people are more open-minded and willing to listen. Image descriptions are one of many accommodations we can use to make fandom spaces more welcoming to everyone.

Thank you to every single one of you who responded and who took the time out of your lives to tell me your stories for this poll. I'm going to be taking the next steps soon towards turning this research into a larger paper, so I cannot thank you all enough! Stay tuned, I'll probably be collecting some more data in the future - perhaps more specific data regarding certain things to finetune my results.

Here is a screenshot of the poll, for reference:

[Image description: a screenshot of a Tumblr poll. The title reads "Have you personally encountered ableism in fandom spaces? (This includes physical disabilities and isn't just about neurodivergence and mental health.)" 87.2% of respondents said yes, whilst 12.8% respondents said no. This is the final result from 1,173 votes. End image description.]

Please reblog this if you vote, and if you'd like to share your own stories with me, please do, as this poll is part of a larger study I'm working on and the more data I can get for that, the better! If you'd be okay with sharing your story with me and having it anonymously included in the essay I'm writing, you can message me so we can discuss further.

Death of a Fandom: The Novel

so many people want to see their OTPs and favorite characters go through these heart-wrenching emotional depressing scenarios and all I want is for them to have horrible giggle fits that they can't stop over really stupid things

is that too much to ask for

...also, the fact that I remember the Ichigo shipping wars of the mid-2000s makes me feel so old. Like, there were people on Livejournal arguing over whether Ichigo should be with Orihime or Rukia and it got SO nasty and it was basically like a car crash: you wanted so badly to look away, but you kept watching anyway.

I wasn't even in the Bleach fandom and I remember it because one night cherrycolouredx and I were hanging out at her house and we found someone using the handle IchiRukiAvenger who claimed to know the ending of Bleach from speaking with Tite Kubo himself. It was both fascinating and horrifying to see these people bickering in all caps.