Thread by @therisingtithes

Since I’ve been reminded of the thing, let’s talk about representation and fandom cruelty.

[cw threats]

Back in the day, when I was a wee fan fool, I really got into Welcome to Night Vale. It was the best thing I had ever heard. At that point, it was the only fiction podcast I listened to on each episode’s premiere date.

I also did this… idk, fanart ethnography project? on my Tumblr back then, called How Many Cecils, which (inadequately) tracked how much fanart depicted Cecil Palmer as a PoC compared to how many depicted him as white. For some background:
therisingtithes.tumblr.com/post/642109417…

At the point just before I stopped collecting data, all the methodological issues notwithstanding, the maths bore out that around 60% of drawings of this canonically raceless radio host were white, & many of them whitewashed his canonical MoC partner Carlos too.

When I stopped collecting data, I stopped listening to WtNV, too. Not because the show was bad! I kinda miss it sometimes, even.

It’s because the fandom was… painful.

Every four days or so, back then, was a new knock-down-drag-out shouting match about whether ~SJWs~ were saying it was racist to have a headcanon. Meanwhile, people were literally harassing teenagers in tags, belittling them for merely associating with PoCecil.

In short, a lot of white folks were absolutely shook that a man established by the show to have no discernible *human* features was being drawn by PoC teenagers as a PoC. And when they couldn’t take it, they told teen artists to kill themselves.

I didn’t get much of it, mostly because even though folks did notice my project, it never really did gain enough ground to matter. That in itself is already pretty burdensome, but say what? Sometimes you don’t go viral.

But that was, for me, a good example of the kind of microcosms that fandom can be.

A podcast about people who didn’t exist got some white people mad enough to bully teenagers over some drawings. And on its face, it was undeniably racist—the thing people insist fandom never is.

When we frame issues of fandom, people like to attach to the assumption that it’s ignorant teen (girl) SJ advocates wild with power. We never consider more often that racist, sexist & classist entitlements already run amok in fan discourse. (cf rocket statues)

So the narrative that folks who routinely lack power in discourse are assumed to be the abusers of power in fandom. It’s all so… well, it’s all so Paramount Heathers. How very.

When the truth is that whatever power PoC negotiate through fandom is simply through being able to make & disseminate fanworks that value our bodies. And with WtNV, there was this rare glimpse of a kind of supernatural blank slate: Cecil really could be anyone we wanted.

That some people didn’t want that to happen so badly that they lashed out at the mere idea of PoC imagining him as non-white was maybe the one time a fandom made me stop enjoying something. It was a kind of alarm. Can you love something you hesitate to mention online?

I guess I say all of this to say that fandom still in general has a lot of stuff to work through, but while a lot of those things gussy themselves up in SJ rhetoric, more often than not the power dynamics are exactly as status quo as you’d imagine.

And that’s either keeping a lot of brilliant folks out, or making the brilliant folks already inside feel like packing up their stuff. Neither is right or good.

Addendum a:
shoutout to @Echo__Chamber & @butwithak for this brilliant paper on racist toxicity in the Marvel & Star Wars fandom. This kind of wickedness, & actual fan academia around it, is not new & not going anywhere.

https://twitter.com/echo__chamber/status/1040046618605768708

Addendum b:
before it all turns doom & gloom, I do want to say that I am glad that there are so many fandoms where marginalized fans get to be present & undenied. It’s just also worth noting that this is never an easy path, & that PoC require fandom support.

Some of fandom’s most high-profile fiascos are indicators that marginalized fans need support from their fellow fans if they’re gonna maintain. Even in the media & fandoms that treat us well, these kinds of toxicity will crop up. Good fandom combats it rather than lets it be.

It’s good that in many fandoms PoC refuse to give in, & continue fighting for their presence. But winning isn’t fighting—winning is marginalized communities never having to fight for their own visibility or safety again.