Snowflake Challenge 3, Part 2

[author_by_night]

This is a reflection of my last post. I realized after making it that my fandom experience is different from a lot of people's, and I think that counts as a changed perspective, if not opinions. 

First, this does mention the Harry Potter fandom. I am not talking about it to condone JK Rowling's views, I'm talking about why I think my perception of fandom is a little skewed in relation to other people's. If you do not want to read about a JK Rowling property, I completely understand.

I'm going to be very transparent: My first fandom, Harry Potter, was a lot stricter than most fandoms, and sometimes that strictness led to flat-out snobbery. People judged what you wrote, what you shipped, whether or not your OCs were Mary Sues (the Scarlet Letter of fandom)...

Of course, not everyone with certain interests was judgmental about it. I have to point that out. Plenty of fans knew they had specific interests and were cool about it.
 
Canon shipping was also very much a thing, although I think it had a slightly different meaning than it does now. People would often ship because they wanted them to be canon, not just to have fun. Which isn't to say deliberately not canon pairings didn't exist - Harry/Draco was a MAJOR one. It's just that a lot of fans did seem to think the point of shipping was for the ships to be canon, or at least close to canon. My guess, in retrospect, is that a lot of canon shippers were new to fandom, fell in love with the canon discourse, and became canon shippers from there without realizing that ships were more often than not, not canon. I say that having been such a person. 

Purity culture tended to come in the form of fandom conservatives. It was less "shipping this is more moral than shipping that" and more fandom evangelicals. Which sadly, there were more of than you'd realize.

Since then, I haven't really been in many major fandoms, or if I have, it's been more on reading reviews and reactions being heavily involved in the fic side of the things. So that probably also skews my perspective a little.

To date, my most active fandom skews older. Which isn't to say I haven't seen drama, but not to the levels I see described. I was very recently trying to get into a fandom that had of anti and canon shipper nonsense, so I backpedaled hard.

Just interesting to see how everyone's perspectives can be so different. 
 

Comments

[elizalavelle]

I wonder if purity culture didn't appear more in the Harry Potter fandom because the books were so forbidden for a lot of very religious folks. Reading them was a form of rebellion but they did come to the fandom with a lot of other hang ups about relationships and sex and one small act of rebellion doesn't undo a lifetime of that kind of indoctrination.

I find as I get older I have far less time for fandom drama so if I see a lot of infighting in a fandom space I just don't want to be there.

[author_by_night]

I wonder if purity culture didn't appear more in the Harry Potter fandom because the books were so forbidden for a lot of very religious folks. Reading them was a form of rebellion but they did come to the fandom with a lot of other hang ups about relationships and sex and one small act of rebellion doesn't undo a lifetime of that kind of indoctrination.

Interesting! I think that could have been the case for some of them, for sure. Thinking about it, some of them were into other things that I would think a religious person wouldn't like, so maybe that was it. (For example, Supernatural - I've never seen much of it, but as I understand it, it's actually pretty critical of religion? So that surprised me. Same with Angel the series.)

I also think that the canon-centric side of fandom had mostly het ships, with a few exceptions (like Remus/Sirius, that was a popular one among canon shippers), so unfortunately homophobes felt "safe" there, even though we didn't really want them either.


I find as I get older I have far less time for fandom drama so if I see a lot of infighting in a fandom space I just don't want to be there.


Agreed.

Infighting is exhausting.

[elizalavelle]

Deconstruction from religion is rarely linear. Even if it's not a full deconstruction but just moving away from some of the really harmful ideas I think it probably takes a path that doesn't look logical from the outside.

Supernatural doesn't strike me as a show that those who are very into religious beliefs would love. It uses religion as a base in that there are angels and demons and hell (which implies there must be a heaven in that world as well) but it's not really a show that's about being godly you know?

I could see it being a fandom world where things were generally more straight, especially when people were focussed on what was canon. It's also a bit safer in that most of the characters were children and so I'd expect there would be more friendship to PG kind of stories out there. The more explicit stuff of course would exist but if you're not into that there would be plenty of other things to focus on.

[author_by_night]

Thinking about it now, I wonder if my former friend just liked the earlier seasons of SPN? I don't know for sure, obviously you would, but it seems to me it started as more of a "two guys on the road, wackiness and some darkness ensues" show than "literal war with God" show. At the same time, I remember noticing the contradiction at the time, unless it's a false memory. It's also not as though evangelicals are never hypocritical.

Not that religious people can't like the show. I had religious friends who watched it, too. But they were normal "I happen to have a religion" religious, not evangelicals who thought everything against their religion was bad.


so I'd expect there would be more friendship to PG kind of stories out there. The more explicit stuff of course would exist but if you're not into that there would be plenty of other things to focus on.

Yeah. There was actually a ton of explicit stuff, but you had to know where to look for it, and there were lots of debates on when explicit was and wasn't okay. Two of the sites I frequented didn't have a lot of explicit fic, but one of them definitely did. That one was very much not fussy about canon pairings, though. (The site may have been founded as a rebuttal to the more canon-centric ones. However, I don't know that for sure.)

[elizalavelle]

That's also a good point. Supernatural definitely changed course as the seasons went on. Also good point that Evangelicals often hold some hypocritical views (see anyone who is claiming the Orange Dictator is a holy person.)