I liked it, and as for your critiques... eh, not untrue, but videos aren't gonna cover everything in these cases.
Honestly, I just like Sarah Z for the same reason I like a lot of content creators like her— getting to see fandom talked about in a way that maintains that nuance exists and doesn't feel like it's constantly in the "World is falling apart around us" zone. It's not perfect but nothing is.
Edited by Riley1sCool on Feb 1st 2022 at 8:27:05 AM
My favourite Recurring Fanon Character is from the Sonic franchise. Eggette/Omelette, Eggman's niece, who owes her existence to an upside-down Eggman sprite
, is so fun.
The mention of the Gravity Falls fandom and Tad Strange reminds me of another popular fandom idea that was around until "A Tale of Two Stans" aired. There was this idea that, parallel to Dipper and Mabel as a duo, there was a *trio* with a younger Stan, Ford, and McGuckett when they worked on the portal. There was a LOT of fanart I remembered seeing during the long hiatus in the middle of Season 2 that had the adventures of this trio.
Then when "A Tale of Two Stans" aired, it showed that McGuckett wasn't as involved as people had expected, and that Stan had no involvement at all with the creation of the portal. There was another small detail in that people initially had Ford's name wrong (the foreshadowing that Stan's twin brother was the author of the journals was very strong, but some people initially thought his name would be Stanley, when that's actually Stan's real name), so a lot of that art is tagged with Stanford as "Stanley".
The one example I remember is that Neko Atsume meme where everyone was drawing these two cats that someone dreamed were canon: Hobo and Glunkus
.
Also, I initially read that video title as "Mormon and Fanon" and I would love to see that video.
To continue off what Hylarn mentioned earlier, the idea that "transformative" (or more pejoratively, In Name Only) fandom is liberating and inherently more minority-friendly and virtuous than so-called "curatorial" (more pejoratively, gatekeepy) fandom who is stolid and conservative has been a minefield of discourse on Tumblr for almost a decade now. Sarah does touch upon some of the irony of the situation in which sufficiently up-its-ass transformative fandom becomes its own kind of curatorial in its demand that fic be a sufficient degree or type of transformative, i.e. a work with low amounts of romance attracting a demographic who demands that the majority of fan content and headcanon output primarily be torrid romances that take place in a limited number of stock settings (often highschool/college, coffee/flower shop, Regency, or Medieval European Fantasy).
I don't think Sarah is necessarily one of the above types I'm about to talk about, though I do think she is a bit biased and thus overly romanticizes the transformative side because a lot of her own participation in fandom was so heavily shipping-related (transformative types tend to especially love shipping and romance). But said fandom divide has at times gotten to the point where some on the transformational side have suggested that caring about canon and liking and trying to be compatible with it where possible, including when the source material is not the most cohesive or demographically woke, is inherently bad and authoritarian.
Ergo, people who actually want to play with existing Star Wars lore and talk about the Galactic Senate and the structure of the Jedi Order, and ask for more stories from fanfic writers to try stick to the sci fi trappings, for example a Gen Fic where Rey, Poe, and Finn were all Force Sensitives in the Old Republic, instead of transporting everyone to a Sugar Bowl Modern No Powers Coffee Shop Omegaverse AU, or BDSM kinkathon, are seen as stodgy cishet male boomers and "Nerds" who hate fun, even when canon-compliant, canon-deviation, and Original Flavor fics can be plenty of fun in their own right. It's true that reactionary nerds have often used lore gatekeeping as an excuse to discriminate against minority fans, but that doesn't mean lore curation is inherently regressive either (not to mention the divide has shades of enforcing a version of the whole Mother Nature, Father Science dichotomy to it).
As one of said people who tends to favor Gen Fic that attempts to remain somewhat tied to canon and does not read a whole lot of romance fic outside of a few exceptions, I can say for a fact that despite attempts to stereotype us as such, plenty of us are also women, people of color, and otherwise not cishet, so it's rather tiring to see some folks on Tumblr trash us and make assumptions about us because they buy into the belief that socially-conscious fanfiction should always be prescriptive and didactic first, recreational second.
Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 2nd 2022 at 12:16:38 PM
Also, this may be a case of semantics, but I've never really been entirely in board with "the work belongs to the fans as much as the creator". Different interpretations are what belongs to the fans since it feels slightly intrusive to claim ownership over something like that.
Of course it is often easier to do this when a work leans more towards being a corporate product, but even still, I find that it is better for fans and creators to remain separate instead of the blurring of lines we see more often. It is a very much biased opinion of mine, but I don't think much good comes from such mingling.
Also, while I'm not touching the subject of Chihiri with a ten foot pole and she was wise not to talk too much in the subject, it is slightly naive to think that people won't be whipped up into a frenzy just by putting up a long and slightly hard to read annotation saying that you've heard all the takes already.
Also also, I've never had the impression that she was using Emily as a shield or that she influences what Emily says, but I still do find it a bit much how often she mentions when a part was written by her very trans editor and co-writer, as if one could or should take one voice as authoritative for the whole demographic.
Don't catch you slippin' now.Considering a lot of the harassment both Sarah and Emily have received, I don't blame them for emphasizing it when a lot of people reject any of their commentary with bad faith arguments and Twitter dramatics.
I'll admit I keep a lot of fandom stuff at arms length, but I've not personally seen much of that. I've seen people occasionally talk about damming it all with canon, usually in intentionally humorous and hyperbolic terms, but nothing that vitriolic.
Edited by Diana1969 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 7:33:11 AM
One of the Homestuck writers accused Sarah and Emily of being cis transphobes before the HS video was even released, so I think the constant reminders are necessary to prevent as much ignorance as possible.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.Yeah, Sarah said this as sort of disclaimer to said "a trans person said this" in general also a sort of a running gag.
And about mingling fandom and creator.....well, eventually fandom always split from their creator and it will happen especially with some decision(see rowling) but other times it does have a sort of "this work is MINE since I buy and I read it, ergo nothing except myself matter" I call this "Murdering of the author" of sorts.
And with recurring chararter, I will said in mortal kombat fandom I saw two: first was fan favorite hydro, a blue cyberninja with aquatic power than someone recive a nod in mk9 with cyber sub zero and a sort of idea I saw with takeda a sort of "hanzo son" probably because for fanfic writer the shirai ryu prove a problem(that is why MKX is the most fanfic happy game of the series).
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"I mean she does touch on the issue of characters having to adhere to the fanon etc. Also I don't think celebrating transformative works means you are saying curative fandom is bad? Like it's a problem when people say this (and slightly ridiculous since transformative fandom will look up stuff with curative resources and you can you know do both).
Reached the part of the video where Roxel is mentioned. Man, probably the most bizarre part of the KH fandom to me has been how they just completely fell off of AkuRoku between 3D and 3. Fics for that pairing used to be so everywhere and so varied in the late 00s and early 10s that it brought about one of the worst fanfics ever made in that Auschwitz AU, and now they're just nowhere to be seen anymore. Sure, AkuSai filled the gap right back up, but though the ship had legs since Days, Saix was mostly treated as a clingy, Roxas-hating spurned lover until 3 retconned Xion into being based off Saix's memories of an unseen third wheel from his and Axel's childhood. What the heck happened to kill AkuRoku, and why isn't it listed on Ship Sinking?
EDIT: No, wait, Abandon Shipping is the trope that works best for this. Why isn't AkuRoku listed on Abandon Shipping?
Edited by Somethingsomething852 on Feb 2nd 2022 at 10:55:54 AM
Fandom in general and KH fandom in particular got a lot more aggressive about disliking child/adult shipping. Most Akuroku shippers probably think of them as about the same age, but they're not — Axel is in his 20s or something.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.I never thought they were seen as the same age. Always seemed like there was about a 7-8 year gap between them to me (if Roxas was 15 or 16, Axel was 22 or 23), and since I'd also seen plenty of popular ships with age gaps in the high single digits, I never thought the ship bizarre. There'd been plenty of popular seme-uke ships throughout multiple fandoms between minors and non-minors, and this was just looking like another of them.
Edited by Somethingsomething852 on Feb 2nd 2022 at 9:24:53 AM
In my experience Akuroku already started experiencing a major decline with 358/2 Days, which showed Axel and Roxas's relationship in more detail and in a way that came off a lot more aggressively platonic, while likewise focusing heavily on Roxas's bond with Xion in a way that made her The Woobie instead of a poorly-received Satellite Love Interest like Kairi. This led to people, against all odds, actually enjoying the het option instead of subjecting her to the usual Die for Our Ship granted, she dies at the end anyway, saving the work for them. I did notice that from 358/2 Days onward, a large chunk of remaining Akuroku shippers either started shipping them as an OT3, or otherwise swapped over to Roxas/Xion in a natural quenching of the fanbase.
Ignoring the whole age discourse issue which was not as much of a thing in older times, I personally never liked Akuroku even when it was the hot new thing because the Ho Yay came with a big dose of No Yay for me of the Stalker with a Crush kind (therefore even if the ages were not an issue, modern fandom would still consider Akuroku a problematic ship because it "normalizes rape" or something like that). Also as a bit of a disclaimer I personally shipped Roxas with Namine back in the day, which also colored my opinion of the ship and its fans.
That said, nearly every Akuroku fan I've come across is or was themselves a squawky teen who used Roxas as a Possession Sue in order to kiss cute bishie Axel. Likewise there was a lot of terrible hetfic that cut out the Roxas middleman in favor of a direct Mary Sue self-insert. So though it's been a huge NOTP of mine since the beginning, I also would not go as far as some folks in accusing all fans of the ship of being budding child molesters and groomers.
In many of these ships, the uke is frequently a vague proxy for the reader rather than a true object of desire, with their age being more to emphasize their vulnerability and "femininity". Thus the tendency of some anti-shippers to describe the fans of these ships as predominantly motivated by pedophilia (as in, implying that the fans want to be the "Axel" out of a desire to objectify pre/barely-pubescent bodies) comes off as a serious misunderstanding of what truly motivates a lot of these shippers, which tends to be more about a desire to be desired and completely overwhelmed by your partner. Basically it's not about fetishizing their youth so much as their vulnerability in general (also a conflation of being penetrated with weakness and femininity, which is a separate can of worms in its own right).
Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 3rd 2022 at 9:49:08 AM
Nah, he was definitely coming at it from the creepy straight guy end. If it was the shipping end it'd have been the 17-yo brandishing that card. Not that it'd really have made it much better in my opinion.
Or they'd both be adults and Tessa would be Shane's secretary or something else to reinforce the kinky Unequal Pairing aspect.
Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 2nd 2022 at 10:55:08 AM
The KH section of the video really brought me back to the mid 2000's era of the fandom. I was there for some of that, although the WW 2 AU I was mercifully completely unaware of.
It was a very different time, that's for sure.
Speaking of out-there fanfiction, I'm suddenly reminded of the infamous J2 Haiti fic
. When transformative fandom goes sufficiently off the rails.
"It's hard to cross boundaries in a fandom where the most popular ships involve a) incest, b) an angel wearing a human, whose soul was trapped in the body for years before the SPN writers remembered he was still in there, as a skin suit, c) the actors themselves, d) Lucifer. "
Ok this have to be one of the best way to start a post, I legit laught very hard right now.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

...Okay, I have some problems with this video:
First, while it does touch on the idea of fanon as misinformation, it does so mostly in the form of talking about a specific, widescale instance, while I'm pretty certain that most fanon stems from people assuming that their favourite author knows more than they do
Second, and really my main issue, is that it presents collective storytelling as an inherent good, but does never attempts to justify this