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AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#251: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:28:52 PM

Actor Shipping has always been a thing, but SPN fandom infamously went above and beyond with it, between birthing (heh) an entire spinoff genre off of it in the form of Omegaverse, and of course, the insane "tinhats" who formed entire communities around being as invasive of the actors' personal lives as possible and formulating far-ranging conspiracy theories about their wives and children and directly harassing them and their bodyguards (whom they needed because of said tinhats). They were so infamous that Tinhats was the old name for Actor Shipping until it was broadened to include more innocuous examples.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 2nd 2022 at 11:56:22 AM

phantom1 Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#252: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:36:54 PM

That is a very far way to take it yes.

Hylarn (Don’t ask)
#253: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:39:07 PM

...why do people ship the actual ACTORS fucking hell.

Oh, that's been around forever. I'm pretty certain there was some stuff from the Beatles' heyday. ...I think the first big real person shipping fandom was probably LotR, though? I remember it rather eclipsing the main work in the fanspace

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#254: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:41:41 PM

what the hell is a omegaverse?.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#255: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:42:47 PM

IIRC X-Files, which was the Trope Codifier for a lot of fandom shipping trends, had a quite huge Actor Shipping fanbase. The Titanic fanbase did too.

[up] Oh boy. Wikipedia has a write-up of it here, but basically it's Boys' Love Genre with the Seme and Uke roles biologically hardcoded into the characters by way of outdated wolf biology. Plus knotting, Fantastic Caste System, Sex Slave, semen inflation, Mating Season Mayhem, Mister Seahorse, scenting, soulmates, "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization, and a whole bunch of other fetishes that hurt to type out at once. It's VERY love-it-or-hate it.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 2nd 2022 at 11:48:08 AM

phantom1 Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#256: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:43:52 PM

So you know the misunderstanding of wolf pack dynamics? And you know the fandom popularity of M-Preg?

Diana1969 Since: Apr, 2021 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#257: Feb 2nd 2022 at 8:51:53 PM

I'm pretty certain there was some stuff from the Beatles' heyday.

I know the horror stories of the Beatles fandom during the height of Beatlemania. Ringo Starr's wife Maureen was physically assaulted by crazed fans and had to quit her job and avoid the public spotlight, and that's just ONE example of the abuse people in their circle suffered. But gay slashfic...maybe AFTER they had broken up, but I doubt it existed when they were still together.

Then again, what do I know. Beatles fanatics in the 60's were a terrifying bunch.

Edited by Diana1969 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 3:53:36 AM

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#258: Feb 2nd 2022 at 9:03:55 PM

[up][up][up]Huh, I didnt expect other people aside for mansphere or the alt right to use the alpha, beta omega thing..

it is....a thing......

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
jouXIII The One Who Knows Many Things from Between the Multiverses (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
The One Who Knows Many Things
#259: Feb 3rd 2022 at 1:55:56 AM

Somethingsomething852 said: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.

...Where did you got that impression? As far as I'm aware, nothing in the game implies that.

I assure you, I'm perfectly trustable person
Somethingsomething852 Since: Jan, 2021
#260: Feb 3rd 2022 at 5:26:59 AM

[up]A lot of their chats about "No. i" were headed that way, even though it makes almost no amount of sense. At the very least, it's a rationale to explain why Saix would remember Xion when Garlandnort was digging through the timestream for Orgy members to rejoin their ranks. Haven't played any of the DLC, though, so I've got no clue what the lore may have changed to there.

Edited by Somethingsomething852 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 8:32:24 AM

jouXIII The One Who Knows Many Things from Between the Multiverses (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
The One Who Knows Many Things
#261: Feb 3rd 2022 at 6:43:59 AM

...Except No. i(Xion) and Subject X(the girl Lea and Isa met are two different things and reason why Xion was remembered was due to Vexen's research notes.

I assure you, I'm perfectly trustable person
phantom1 Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#262: Feb 3rd 2022 at 10:03:43 AM

Unknowing, I mean it's not assuming it works like that, it's more in the service of kink, and sexism metaphors. But yes, pretty much.

Riley1sCool Since: Dec, 2014
#263: Feb 4th 2022 at 9:48:47 AM

I think the video's just really interesting; as someone who has almost entirely avoided shipping fandom it always intrigues me when stuff like this happens. Usually I see it with side characters and not straight-up original generation ones, but this is... so interesting to me because it's clear that a lot of creativity went into it, yet at the same time a lot of people were dicks about it. (Trying to dictate what people couldn't do, blowing things out of proportion, making the fucking WWII Organization XII fic).

One of the things I think has a parallel here is the My Hero Academia fandom's treatment of Present Mic. Basically, Present Mic in the show is a hammy joke character with a small degree of depth. However, since he's often next to fangirl favorite Aizawa, Present Mic is often treated as much deeper in fanworks, to the point where I see interpretations of that bleed out into the way fans treat canon - Honestly, the Sherlock people got it easy with the fandom just ignoring canon, in some fandom spaces I've seen the fandom would throw an enormous fit if Moran had shown up and not been exactly what they expected.

I just find Sarah Z so enjoyable to watch because I'm usually looking at these things from the perspective of an outsider and I feel like she and some of the others in that general circle (Melina Pendulum comes to mind) give such interesting different looks into the material while trying to remain welcoming and retain the nuances of it all.

Larkmarn Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#264: Feb 4th 2022 at 12:04:19 PM

@Unknowing: 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

Hydro was actually a Lin Kuei partner to Sub-Zero from a comic series that came out when the games first did. I know this because I had said comics.

He also appeared as a cyber-ninja in an online web show a bit before MK 9 came out. But that might be even more relevant to Sarah's video, if he was big in the fandom as a Cyber-ninja between those years, then that's even more similar to Mormor, fandom latching onto a version of the character that never existed in the main medium and collectively mutating him via fanon.

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#265: Feb 4th 2022 at 1:03:05 PM

Sarah overlooks this a bit (from what I gathered), but amusingly Moran did show up in a fashion in the Sherlock show. He shows up in "The Empty Hearse" (season 3, epiode 1) as "Lord Moran", a terrorist from the House of Lords who secretly works for North Korea. It was actually due that appearance that I heard of this entire insanity that this video is about (by happenstance: I never liked Sherlock or got into its fandom, I just liked Sherlock Holmes and was reading about Moran in media). People were quite mad at the time, to my reckoning.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#266: Feb 4th 2022 at 1:09:35 PM

She mentioned it briefly to point out that the fandom just ignored it. The way she put it, it sounds like the fan reaction was fairly muted and apathetic, but having acute familiarity with how that era of Tumblr fandom could be and her discussion of fanon fandom elsewhere in the vid, I'm more inclined to believe that she was either insulated form the worst of it by being in an unusually calm part of the fandom, or that she whitewashed the reaction and that it was closer to the outrage you describe, since sufficiently invested fans really can't stand having their headcanons shattered.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 4th 2022 at 4:44:25 AM

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#267: Feb 4th 2022 at 1:09:45 PM

She mentions Lord Moran in the video. She notes that the collective reaction from the Mormor fandom was essentially to just shrug, completely ignore him and go back to business as usual.[nja]

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 4th 2022 at 6:10:02 AM

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#268: Feb 4th 2022 at 1:15:24 PM

Ah, must have missed that. The specific experience I had was stumbling on a tumblr thread about Lord Moran that had what looked like a few dozens of people debating if Lord Moran was an afront againt the fanon or if he was actually a 6D chess fake-out move by Steven Moffat (I distinctly remember someone breaking down a perfectly regular scene of the Lord Moran character for "clues" that he was a impostor hired by the real Moran).

From passing knowledge of the Sherlock fandom the video did feel a tad whitewashed, but I'm no expert on the matter like Alley. I deliberately kept myself away.

Edited by Gaon on Feb 4th 2022 at 1:16:06 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#269: Feb 4th 2022 at 1:20:39 PM

It's possible that the videos are a little biased by virtue of Sarah being young and part of the fandom at the time, but I didn't feel comfortable raising that since I had zero experience with the show or its fans.

The fact people might have been thinking it was a galaxy brain bait doesn't surprise me though. The fandom, egged on by Moffat or not, did eventually prove very conspiratorial and tinfoil hatty given the whole Johnlock debacle when the show ended.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 4th 2022 at 6:21:42 AM

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#270: Feb 4th 2022 at 1:31:34 PM

Yeah, I have a low amount of direct experience with Sherlock fans because I deliberately stayed away from them. I saw some of the posts, and the gifsets, and the wank and Die for Our Ship, which caused me to turn away.

But a lot of my experience with other fans who are far enough down the fanon rabbithole, especially if they're citing increased representation as a motivation, is that they see canon that contradicts it as a form of proactive erasure, and respond with a corresponding level of vitriol. A large part of Tumblr culture for much of the 2010s, until the Tumblr ban made a lot of them migrate to Twitter, is that the primary goal of media is to tick off as many representational boxes as possible with actual narrative cohesion taking a backseat (because transformative fandom can just continue to fix it with more fanon).

As it were, we actually got a representational gain with Blaise Zabini's canonization in Harry Potter, but imagine a franchise run by a creator with a decent pedigree for well-intentioned representation and no TERF bullshit, where a large portion of contemporary fandom headcanoned its equivalent of Blaise as a gay tortured Ambiguously Brown trans man suffering from PTSD due to parental abuse, who was in a popular slash ship with [insert popular handsome fandom darling] only for the canon to introduce them as a likely cis European woman who has a great relationship with her parents, does not interact with said hot guy, and any angst she does go through is not the kind that makes her desirably sexy or easy to interpret as "relatable" for self-insertion's sake.

Said fans would flame out and accuse the creators variously of 1) being a bigot and being quite transparent that they're mad that the character did not match popular fanon (And That's Terrible), 2) accuse the creator of being hostile to the demographic of minority fans it attracted and not being considerate to their needs (read: it didn't match fanon and the fans are admitting to entitlement), or 3) accuse the creator of being willfully bigoted because they refused to use the opportunity granted by making this show to increase representation for disenfranchised audiences out there and it's totally about that and not about appeasing fans or validating their fanon (but it pretty obviously is).

These fans will also bash anyone who is content with the canon depiction of the character as is, and go so far as to suggest them as being a bootlicker for accepting what is obviously a repressive hatecrime, even if the canonically character is fine as is, and even if there was no indication that they would match the popular fanon profile, especially if the only basis is that the creator occasionally interacted with fans in the past.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 4th 2022 at 6:52:42 AM

Diana1969 Since: Apr, 2021 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#271: Feb 4th 2022 at 5:41:37 PM

It's possible that the videos are a little biased by virtue of Sarah being young and part of the fandom at the time, but I didn't feel comfortable raising that since I had zero experience with the show or its fans.

Personally, I felt like she just kinda didn't want to delve into it too much because it wasn't really part of the focus of the video? The weird thing is that, despite the title and the first half of the video being about Sherlock, the second half moves totally away from it into a general discussion of fanon and headcanons and how they become accepted en masse by fandoms.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#272: Feb 4th 2022 at 6:46:26 PM

"who was in a popular slash ship with [insert popular handsome fandom darling] "

Which more often that not a cis white men is skinny, probably bi and quirky.

Because dear god tumblr have and obsesion with thoses.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
wingedcatgirl mys. minty from the silly dimension from lurking (Holding A Herring) Relationship Status: Oh my word! I'm gay!
mys. minty from the silly dimension
#273: Feb 4th 2022 at 6:51:21 PM

And if he's not actually a skinny quirky cis bi white man, tumblr fandom will waste no time turning him into one.

Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#274: Feb 4th 2022 at 7:19:19 PM

[up]Hell he dosent have to be bi, just look enough androgineous to be consider one, bonus point if the chararter is also anti heroic in general.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#275: Feb 4th 2022 at 7:23:57 PM

Maybe not cis. Tumblr darlings tend to disproportionately get headcanoned as transmasculine (almost never transfeminine). Skinny, white, and gay/bi though? Definitely.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 4th 2022 at 10:25:05 AM


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