me writing dialogue: “what is man but a vessel through which a higher entity may see? what is his purpose? must he find a purpose? we are but stardust; the universe comprehending itself.”
me writing action: they ran real fast from the bad men aand legs hurty
me writing action: Her legs pounded against the earth, the familiar jolt grounding her like nothing else could. Magic, gods, royalty—she didn’t know anything about that. But running? That’s something she’d been doing since day one.
me writing dialogue: “I dunno man whatchu wanna do” “I dunno. What do you think?” “Hey man I don’t know”
me writing action: room go boom
me writing dialogue: noppity nope, that ain’t dope
there is NO WAY to avoid tropes!! everything is a trope!! that doesn’t mean it’s bad!! embrace it!!
At a convention, a famous writer once said “tropes are like gears, if you use them well, they can be an integral part of the engine/plot. Or, you can just throw them on the side and make a steampunk hat”
I took that to mean that tropes are just tools, and, if used right, aren’t even really noticed.
“complaining about a story having tropes is like complaining that a tree is made of wood”
Word of God is not canon. If you’re in the Harry Potter fandom, then you are intimately familiar with this concept.
Fanon is never going to affect or take away from canon. One person’s headcanons or ships won’t change what’s actually in canon. Someone shipping non-canon ships is not “taking away your representation” because your actual representation is still in canon and probably very present in the rest of the fandom.
The author is dead. This is a true statement for every fandom. The creator of a work may be able to speak with the Word of God but, to continue that metaphor, they are not a god you have to listen to or follow.
Fandom is meant to be a creative playground. Limiting ourselves to “acceptable” and canon ships and “acceptable” tropes and all that doesn’t do anything except limit the potential our fandoms have. It’s fun to explore different relationship dynamics, it’s fun to explore alternate universes, it’s fun to explore different tones and genres, and a fandom that does those things stays fun and interesting for the people in it.
There are bigots in fandom. There are racists, homophobes, transphobes, queerphobes, ableists, xenophobes, antisemites, islamophobes, and every other kind of bigot in fandom. This doesn’t mean that fandom is bad, just that it falls victim to the exact same issues that literally every community in the world does.
There is no age requirement and no age restriction. There are 80 year olds reading fanfiction written by 12 year olds. There are 18 year olds reblogging fanart drawn by 60 year olds. There are meta discussions spanning generations. Adult spaces should remain for adults and kid spaces should remain for adults, but intergenerational friendships are not inherently weird or creepy.
On that same topic, adults in fandom are not responsible for the overall safety of kids in fandom. It’s our responsibility to tag properly, warn for nsfw content, interact with children appropriately, drive out known predators from our spaces, and similar things. It is not our responsibility to parent anyone except our own kids.
Fandom is not activism. It can be used for that, and often is, but nothing about it is inherently political. A person’s fandoms, ships, favorite characters, etc tells you nothing about their political beliefs. Fandom is not about how “progressive” we can be with our headcanons, it’s about having fun.
Feel free to add more.
If you headcanon a character to have one sexuality/disability/whatever and someone doesn’t share that headcanon, they are not -phobic or -ist or whatever just for that.
eg: if you headcanon a character with no canonical sexuality (who we’ll name Lucretia totally at random) to be a lesbian, that’s fine. But if you act like people who write or portray Lucretia as NOT a lesbian are lesbophobic, homophobic, and are somehow “taking away representation” by not also headcanoning her as a lesbian, then you’re an asshole.
No I’m not still bitter about a bunch of assholes in one fandom what are you talking about?
FUCK narratives that force a child to forgive their shitty parent out of guilt and/or obligation!!!
FUCK narratives that force anyone to forgive any kind of abuser out of guilt and/or obligation or for some bullshit higher ground and perception of Goodness™
Remember when Zuko shot his dad with lightning and then threw him in jail? That was a good narrative
Writing about a child rapist did not make Vladimir Nabokov a child rapist.
Writing about an authoritarian theocracy did not make Margaret Atwood an authoritarian theocrat.
Writing about adultery did not make Leo Tolstoy an adulterer.
Writing about a ghost did not make Toni Morrison a ghost.
Writing about a murderer did not make Fyodor Dostoevsky a murderer.
Writing about a teenage addict did not make Isabel Allende a teenage addict.
Writing about dragons and ice zombies did not make George R.R. Martin either of those things.
Writing about rich heiresses, socially awkward bachelors, and cougar widows did not make Jane Austen any of those things.
Writing about people who can control earthquakes did not make N.K. Jemisin able to control earthquakes.
Writing about your favorite characters and/or ships in situations that you choose does not make you a bad person.
It’s a shame that in this day and age these things need to be said.
Or, in short: the narrator =/ the author.
You know what else is a shame? This nowadays tendency of putting on the author the responsibility of teaching their readers morality.
Authors are allowed to write morally ambiguous characters.
Authors are allowed to write downright despicable characters – and guess what they are even allowed to make despicable characters charismatic and likeble and the protagonists of their stories if they wish – because absolute monsters exist only under the bed.
It is not up to the author to spoonfeed the readers about morality and Yes I know this character did a bad thing and I am going going to show it in the story and make other characters call them out of it and–Bullshit.
The authors should be able to write what they want without having thousands of people jumping and their throats claiming to know them, their ideas and their morality based on what they write.
It’s not up to the author to teach you about what is right and what is wrong.
It’s not up to the author to teach you about what is right and what is wrong.
Totally. It is not a authors responsibility to teach the reader morals.
That’s on you and parents and teachers, etc.
It is a authors job to make a magnificent bastard have fun adventures while being a magnificent bastard.
And if they want to make a villain win, and have a fun story, then do it.
ifesbob 