Crossposted gripe
Jan. 15th, 2019 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealPosted this on Tumblr a couple months ago, last paragraph new:
I feel like I’ve said something along these lines before but I can’t find it now, so repeating. This almost certainly applies to more than one fandom.
The longer a work of fiction goes on–more creators, more media forms, more installments, more changes of heart from one creator–the more likely it will be that it becomes less thematically coherent. Instead of “the message of work X is Y” or “a main theme of A is B,” it’s much more likely to be diffuse and say “well C seems to signify D but part E kind of completely undermines D, so there’s no real consensus.” Which is less pithy but oh well, that’s the price you pay for success!
There’s also a strong chance that with a lot of different parts, not all of which fit with each other tonally, a franchise will appeal to a lot more people, some of whom like facets that others don’t. If I like character F and someone else likes character X, that’s fine! Even if I don’t personally like X, it’s not my place to say “oh you’re not a real fan, because real fans like me appreciate F the most.” Gatekeeping is bad, mmkay.
But the caveat of all this is, don’t try to appeal to some common message or thematic motif, if the series is too disparate to have one! “Oh I love X, and because this is series Q, we should appreciate X’s plotline in light of major theme D” doesn’t really compute when X only appears in installment E, which has nothing to do with D. It’s okay if we like different parts of the fandom, but if what you like involves ignoring or overriding the parts that I like, you don’t get to claim we’re all in it for the same reason.
2019 update: This also goes for "I love fandom A, but if you hold position Z [on an RL issue that doesn't really come up in the work], then you're not allowed to like it." Sometimes a diffuse work of fiction is going to appeal to people with different beliefs and behaviors, and you can't really prevent that! It's fine to say "I think this position is reprehensible," period, unrelated to your opinions on anything else. But trying to police who is allowed to enjoy the same things as you is sort of a backwards no-true-Scotsman fallacy.
I feel like I’ve said something along these lines before but I can’t find it now, so repeating. This almost certainly applies to more than one fandom.
The longer a work of fiction goes on–more creators, more media forms, more installments, more changes of heart from one creator–the more likely it will be that it becomes less thematically coherent. Instead of “the message of work X is Y” or “a main theme of A is B,” it’s much more likely to be diffuse and say “well C seems to signify D but part E kind of completely undermines D, so there’s no real consensus.” Which is less pithy but oh well, that’s the price you pay for success!
There’s also a strong chance that with a lot of different parts, not all of which fit with each other tonally, a franchise will appeal to a lot more people, some of whom like facets that others don’t. If I like character F and someone else likes character X, that’s fine! Even if I don’t personally like X, it’s not my place to say “oh you’re not a real fan, because real fans like me appreciate F the most.” Gatekeeping is bad, mmkay.
But the caveat of all this is, don’t try to appeal to some common message or thematic motif, if the series is too disparate to have one! “Oh I love X, and because this is series Q, we should appreciate X’s plotline in light of major theme D” doesn’t really compute when X only appears in installment E, which has nothing to do with D. It’s okay if we like different parts of the fandom, but if what you like involves ignoring or overriding the parts that I like, you don’t get to claim we’re all in it for the same reason.
2019 update: This also goes for "I love fandom A, but if you hold position Z [on an RL issue that doesn't really come up in the work], then you're not allowed to like it." Sometimes a diffuse work of fiction is going to appeal to people with different beliefs and behaviors, and you can't really prevent that! It's fine to say "I think this position is reprehensible," period, unrelated to your opinions on anything else. But trying to police who is allowed to enjoy the same things as you is sort of a backwards no-true-Scotsman fallacy.
