But it is. Just because we elevate one set of fiction to “religion” doesn’t mean that their canon collection is sacred.
The funny thing is, you would think that religious zealots would get upset at changes to established canon, but they are all about that.
1 Like
AT MOST, the only people who should care about what’s “canon” and what’s not “canon” are fanfiction writers
I believe that Obi-One Kenobi said that exact same thing in Star Trek.
2 Likes
I’ve been finding that not having seen or read all of the source material for a show or movie makes it more enjoyable.
I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop because I’d forgotten much of the original series. I’m enjoying the Witcher because I couldn’t get through the first book because the pacing was so slow compared to the show. Now I don’t know what sacred story is being twisted, nor do I really care.
I’d challenge the idea that the original sources are sacred or should be adhered to with religious devotion. I read a lot of comic books as a teenager, but I enjoy the Marvel movies so much more when they don’t go where I expect them to.
2 Likes
Hah, I’d never heard about Fansy, that was a fun little read. Reminds me of the Bloodninja chat logs.
1 Like
flame wars on Reddit and Twitter
The answer is in the post. Social media - the internet in general - has turned everything into endless raging wars. Hell, I had a tweet go semi-viral yesterday and spent all day worrying my feed would be flooded with angry retorts. We live in an era of fandom expansion as well as endless rage at everything all the time, and it’s fucking exhausting. And I’m lucky! I’m a cis white male, I don’t get a EDIT: fraction (why the heck did I write “facture?”) of the hate women and members of minority communities get.
Our tools of mass communication have been propagandized and are turned against us.
I love the internet. I think in its current form it should be destroyed and erased from our collective consciousness. We are not ready as a species for the responsibility.
6 Likes
Good point. Especially since Disney pretty much nuked the whole of the Extended Universe. And in comics, mostly gone are the days of a character making a comment and a little box that says (As seen in issue 173! - Ed). They keep rebooting and rewriting the continuity.
I guess when things start and are “small”, it is easier to keep it all straight. You add more stories and they start to run into each other.
Which is why for things I like, I view each new “thing” as a new legend. A new story teller that may or may not take the other tales into consideration. Imagine a group of people telling similar stories that have the same characters and places, but details changes. “Well the way I heard it was…”
1 Like
Hm… seems to me this is just like other aspects of life lately - politics, health care, sports, almost everything… The toxic fandom debates might just be a manifestation of the larger forces in society at large?
I don’t think that’s helping these past couple of years, but I think things have been getting bad since the time the culture wars really started taking off (from the Gingrich years in congress, when it broke out more into the mainstream discourses) at the same time that more of us started to get access to the internet…
Agreed. I think it still provides a place for people to think about larger issues together with others.
I think that’s because most of us are interested in keeping it that way. We take keeping the BBS a generally pleasant place to be seriously, and don’t let people get away with shit.
But quite a bit of those are not from corporations, but from the fandom itself. Obviously not necessarily TV shows or films, but certainly podcasts, art, youtube channels, and the like. It’s just another iteration of fandom…
I’d say they’re subcultural, rather than mainstream. Almost all popular culture is “subcultural”…
And that’s certainly their problem, not anyone else’s… Especially as this tends to be aimed at women and POC by white men believing that they need to act as gatekeepers. Kevin Smith made a great point about the fandom around Twillight and got booed for it, that the reason why people looked down on it was because the fandom was largely made up of young women… But how is it any different than dudes dressing up like Spock or Han Solo…
True.
9 Likes
My point isn’t that they’re soulless corporate stuff necessarily. But if, say, you collect something unusual and think you’re the only one doing it, only to discover three YouTube channels, an entire web forum, and a podcast dedicated to that one tiny niche of collecting, with dozens of people with better collections, it becomes hard to feel like you’re a unique individual or that anything you’re doing in that niche is worthwhile in the larger picture. Or perhaps you’re a DM and find that some popular media is using ideas from your D&D campaign- not stolen, just developed independently, but now people assume that YOU stole those ideas from the popular media. With a population of billions and the internet connecting most of them, these scenarios become more and more common, and I understand the frustration there (but it’s certainly no excuse for going toxic- nobody is actually doing anything wrong in either of these examples and they’re as entitled to enjoy their hobby as hypothetical-you).
I hope this isn’t too pedantic, but… depends on the subculture? Avengers: Endgame is the second highest grossing film of all time, and I was invited to see Black Panther by someone who had never picked up a comic book before in their life, just because they had heard the hype around it. At that point it’s hard not to consider at least Marvel Comics mainstream, which was absolutely not the case 15 years ago. Meanwhile, I’d consider stuff like Lovecraftian fiction to be a subculture, but it’s at least popular enough to be deconstructed by books like Lovecraft Country, which was itself popular enough to spawn a TV series- again, something that would be pretty unthinkable 15 years ago.
2 Likes
I’d argue that Marvel fandom is still a subculture that crossed into more general mainstream audiences. But the hardcore fandom did not go away, even if they are more visible now. Something can have mainstream success and still have a subculture dedicated to it.
yes, but it’s also had some more mainstream exposure as of late (Lovecraft Country, and there is still talk about Del Toro putting together a film for In the Mountains of Madness). And that genre of horror pops up elsewhere.
Someone enjoying a marvel film or watching lovecraft country might not be a part of the subculture, but just might be a consumer of the popular thing without delving deeper.
But that’s just my $.02 as a scholar who studies subcultures! YMMV, of course!
5 Likes
Obligs:
6 Likes
14 Likes
That’s fascinating. It makes sense, but I’ve never thought of it that way before. Using Marvel as a specific example, could you further explain what the mainstream fandom looks like versus the subculture? I would love to hear more about it through your academic lens.
3 Likes
I study punk and it’s very much the case with that… Sure there is pop punk (Green Day, Sum 41, etc) that has had lots of mainstream success and many mainstream pop stars today incorporate pop punk into their work (Willow Smith and Olivia Rodgrigo, for example), but there is still a thriving, global punk underground that is very much separate from that. At any given moment there are punk shows being put on in dive bars, community centers, or backyards/basements, organized not by professional promoters, but by local kids who aren’t doing it for the money, but to shore up their community ties. Physical and online zines that cater to that culture still function, as to small, independent punk labels that cater specifically to that translocal subculture. MRR is still around (although it went fully online a few years ago). So, despite punk being “incorporated” into the mainstream music industry, the underground punk subculture still exists and thrives.
I would say that the mainstream audience for more well-known punk bands from the 70s and 80s tend to be less into the current punk scene… more casual listeners of punk or generally speaking omnivorous music types tend to not actively participate in a scene (either making music, consuming the music, writing about the music/scene, helping to organize shows, writing zines, doing some sort of promotion, dress the part, etc), but just enjoy the fruits of it - they probably don’t see themselves or their identity as “punk” in a meaningful way. People in a scene tend to identify as punks, dress the part, are in bands or put on shows, or all that other stuff…
As for Marvel, I’d say that people who maybe only read some of the comics (or maybe only the graphic novels of collected stories) and did not seriously get into collecting and other aspects of fandom (cosplaying, fanfic, making art, going to cons, etc) that are the more casual fans, even if they’re really into the films. I’d say the subculture would be made up of people who really got into collecting comics and embracing things like cosplay, going to cons, making art, and fanfic in a serious way. That can of course be true of people who came in after the films, who went seeking the comics that the films were based on, etc. I like Marvel, but I am much more of a casual fan for sure. I wouldn’t say that there is an “underground” subculture like with punk, just that it’s a much more dedicated hardcore fanbase and that it does and can co-exists with the more mainstream audience. One doesn’t cancel the other out, I’d argue.
12 Likes
4 Likes
Oh, I’m stealing this
4 Likes
My ex-husband broke my nose. I know how it feels.
I still don’t think anyone should feel this kind of pain or live with the threat of violence to behave better.
7 Likes
