#its so rewarding not having to larp as a sane person because its just me and this big metal bitch full of weed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mrmallard · 7 years

Text

I’ve been a bit harsh on some things over the years. I wrote a particularly scathing attack on DD/LG stuff that I genuinely went too far with (even as I continue to inch away from kink stuff in general due to evolving tastes), I wrote a scathing Man of Steel calling it a punchy, grimdark piece of shit that earned me a death threat, and early in my blog’s history I wrote a fair few anti-SJW things that was more railing against the idea of over-sensitivity and cherrypicking words to attack someone rather than supporting the rights of people. I still have an issue with people cherrypicking words and throwing a person’s combined history at them to break them down, and while I still believe in the good that social justice blogging is aiming to do, I also spent more than enough time in that circle and I can’t tolerate the always-on, ever-upset atmosphere that drains the energy out of you one blog-post at a time.

This is about none of that. I’ve made my peace with those subjects. But there’s one thing that I haven’t budged on - If anything, I’ve gotten more hard-line about it as of late.

I cannot stand fandoms where people think it’s okay to attack each other, like feral children biting each other until someone draws blood. Fandoms have been going sour for me for a few years now, but it’s only recently that it’s been hitting a tipping point - thanks in most part to Sherlock and the continued campaign of rabid Johnlock shippers.

The following post will be my diatribe about rabid fandom and how they actively hurt their shows. Expect SuperWhoLock and Avatar: The Last Airbender shenanigans.

First of all, a disclaimer: I’m not against all fandoms, and while I’m going to be going after a gay ship, I’m not homophobic. Because surprise surprise, you can think someone is being a massive assholish baby about Johnlock and care about/support gay or queer issues. You can read anything you like into what I say, but if you’re going to break me down for being an ignorant redneck or what have you, please note that a harsh opinion on a fictional ship and its fanatical following isn’t tantamount to saying “gay people have enough good things, and they still want more? Ungrateful little sods.” I only call out rotten behavior because it is rotten. I’m also not against the ships themselves, moreso the idea that it is THE ship and you are OWED the ship and not getting the ship legitimized is DEGRADING and DECEITFUL. That is a trait that applies to ships of all orientations.

I’ve also been in a few fandoms in my day, and I still interact closely with some splinter groups of fans. I’m a big Evangelion fan, I read Questionable Content and have since I was 13 and I’ve been posting in a forum about said webcomic since 2012. So please - don’t take what I say as a sweeping critique of all fandoms, or all fans. Because there are fanbases that are polite or small enough not to be fucking crazy and legitimately harmful to the people around them.

So with my opening statements out of the way, let’s dive into the face-meat of this post - Sherlock is about as toxic as it was three years ago, and has managed to garner an even crazier conspiracy squad full of elitists, loudmouthed “enlightened” fans and ridiculous degrees of fan-wank. It’s gotten so bad that I hear Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are getting pretty fed up with the constant hate.

Tell me - what is particularly sane or healthy about obsessing over a non-existing “true” finale of the show, the date of which was derived from taking letters from a show’s credits, breaking them into numerical equivalents and multiplying them to get a date and time? Shows don’t do that. Network shows definitely don’t do that, and very rarely do they disrupt their planned broadcasts - especially for a hardcore contingent of fans who have been harassing them for years. What makes you think that you, a driving force in crazy, is so deserving of a hidden fourth episode that the BBC has to fuck their other programming over to appease? You aren’t. No-one is. Maybe a crazy Netflix show could do that, since digital distribution is a lot less committal than network television, but it hasn’t happened yet and it wouldn’t happen on a broadcasting station as established as the BBC.

The very thought of a real-world conspiracy to “reward” shippers for their diligence and patience, made in the face of Moffat and Gatiss explicitly stating “IT’S NOT HAPPENING”, is nothing more than entitlement. You feel entitled to John Watson and Sherlock Holmes smooching, you want it to happen so badly that you would weave subtext and hidden clues out of thin air and screech when the actual showrunners shoot it down - I mean there’s nothing wrong when that context is shared and agreed upon among the fandom, but when you throw it in a producer’s face as “OBVIOUSLY canon” and try to destroy the show by mass-complaining through the BBC’s official complaint form because the showrunners didn’t legitimize it, that’s a massive fucking problem that stems from entitlement. They’re either wrong about their own creation, or they’re hiding something that only you and your friends, the true fans who rebel against the filthy Casuals™, would understand, and you rally behind them to say “It’s okay, the world is ready for Johnlock!”, to coax them to part with their precious love-baby and to show your support.

But there’s no fucking love-baby. There never was. It was a fan reaction that continues to spiral into insanity every day because you think these two are so right for each other that the thought of them not fucking is offensive to you.

The “original sin” that broke me out of fandom happened here on Tumblr, in 2013. You remember Avatar: The Last Airbender? Funnily enough, it predates Korra’s shipping wars by six years - and it continued to rage past the advent of Legend of Korra. It was still sparking in 2016.

Avatar was the first show I consciously shipped for, and I was a Kataanger. I liked the idea of Katara and Aang eventually pairing up. An opposing ship, Zutara - Zuko and Katara, the fans of which called themselves Zutarians - were the aggressive arch nemeses of the Kataang shippers. I took part in the shipping wars, but after a while, I just got sick of it. Moreso after I saw the entire show, where not only was Kataang the one that made it out alive - as I feel it should have - but the show could have survived without any pairings, because the group had a great number of platonic relationships. Take romance out, and you still have a pretty decent ragtag bunch of misfits. I still feel like Kataang was telegraphed from the first few episodes, and a ton of arguments I heard for Zutara to justify it at “canonical” - Zuko seeing Katara in Aang’s arms in the first episode and disliking Aang because he looked like he was hurting a pretty girl, telling Katara that he’d “save her from the pirates” in the Water Scroll episode (the pirates he hired to tail the Avatar, and the situation being that he was blackmailing her with a precious family heirloom to sell out the Avatar - really romantic, right?) - were self-righteous, taken out of context at best and smugly insufferable at worst. I still have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Zutara.

But as a teenager - around 16 - I realized how fucking moronic it was to be actively angry about shipping. Both ships can have their highs and lows without being canonical, they can co-exist in peace. People don’t need to sling shit at each other to justify their love for their ship, because people are going to find different things romantic or sexy and it’s no-one’s business to tell them that their feelings are wrong. The sole idea behind shipping - love - is not an ideal that’s worth clawing out someone’s eyes over. I eventually stopped shipping Kataang for a while.

Fast forward to 2013 - at that point, I’m 17 going on 18. I’ve chilled the fuck out, I’m on tumblr, I’m ready to see some cute fucking fanart. I browse the tag for a couple weeks. It’s all good, the fanart is good.

Then a newcomer makes a post that mentions Zutara. People strain themselves not to get mad, and tell this person not to mention Zutara in the Kataang tag, because it’s an insult to their ship and it’s rude to mention it in the Kataang tag. Then the newcomer says “Alright, I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I just see some points that go towards Zutara or Kataang, and I’m not too fussed about which one is ‘correct’ or not.”

The tag FUCKING EXPLODES.

The newcomer is called a troll, Kataangers firebomb the Zutara tag for their perceived “attack” on Kataang, and hostilities are actively stoked by both sides. It calms down in three days. Because so much as mentioning another ship’s name in another ship’s tag - not putting it above the other ship, not trying to offend, just mentioning it - is an offence punishable by fire.

These fandom people, new fans and classic, grown-up fans like myself alike - even older fans in their twenties - are as fucking embarrassing, hostile and shitty as a bunch of tweens were back when the show was still on.

I commented on all that, and people sent me defensive messages about how it was alright to act like a petulant child on the internet, because it’s something they’re passionate about and insulting that behavior is insulting to them. I relent and chill the fuck out.

That entire scenario? It happened three separate times, always in its entirety.

The fans of a thing I like couldn’t leave something alone, like conflict was a fandom tradition and they were proud to take up some sword and shield to defend the honor of their favorite characters. The slightest slight against them was grounds for combat, for anyone with a heartbeat to break out the claws and slash at their “opponent” for invading their territory. The word “militaristic” is thrown around a fair bit in fandom, sometimes as a cover for “fascist”, but the Avatar fandom? Pre- and post-Korra? It felt like people were LARPing combat scenes by smooshing their hands on their keyboards, to cause the most distress.

And that brings me back to Sherlock.

Johnlockers, TJLC or whatever the acronym is - the most vile, blind, deaf fans of the bunch, but not every Johnlock shipper - can’t play nice with any other ship. Johnlock is the end-goal, and they will pursue the blood of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss if they are not handed to them what they feel is rightfully deserved.

That is a sick way of thinking.

You can’t enjoy Johnlock for its own merits, revel in the material you are handed by other fans? The only option is for the pairing to become canonized, and the showrunners are in denial to the degree that they’re beaming you and your friends coded messages to say that it’s okay, that it’s going to be a thing, and that you can’t lose hope? If Johnlock isn’t canonized, the LGBT community has taken a shark-sized bite and will not be insulted by these BBC fascists who strung them along for so long?

I have a theory, and it’s a bit crazy. Maybe - just maybe - Mark Gatiss isn’t coding a secret gay relationship into a show because he’s gay himself, maybe him and Steven Moffat never intended for Sherlock to be this big maze about two men falling in love and bettering themselves through their love, and they aren’t being cracked down upon by the BBC. Maybe they actually mean it when they say “Johnlock isn’t canon”. Maybe they don’t have enough pull to broadcast a secret episode of their TV show on network television, and you are wasting your time by justifying the intentions of some people you have never met by the fiendish measures you wish that they would be able to take.

And maybe - just by the smallest sliver of a chance - that doesn’t invalidate Johnlock or any of the work you’ve put into it as a super-fan.

Like with Avatar, a pairing doesn’t have to be canon to be legitimate, to cause an effect or stir in a community or individual. Johnlock has already affected the real world, in good and bad ways. People have come together and become friends over the ship. You have the groundwork of a beautiful thing, a ship that has endured for over one hundred years in various shapes and sizes, a ship that has been canon in different continuities - you have the feelings Sherlock gives you towards these ships, and the ship has the clout of decades worth of interpretation. That’s great.

But that doesn’t make it canon in this universe, nor does it make it okay to ostracize and attack people who think maybe it’s not such a good idea to spend nigh-on five years obsessing over a bunch of fictional people. And maybe this unintended ship by the creators doesn’t need to be canonized. Maybe they don’t have to bend to your demands, and they have free reign to make the show that they want - and by exercising that right, they don’t intend by any measure to exploit your or lead you along, and mean no disrespect to the LGBT community.

Maybe Johnlock was a side-effect of Sherlock’s earlier days, or even planned to be canon once upon a time. And maybe the fanbase bloating to a truly sickening degree, flooding Tumblr with millions of uninspired, truly fanatical posts, turned them off the idea.

There’s a thousand things to say about Sherlock as a cultural phenomenon, or as an example of fanaticism affecting the course of a show’s run, and I don’t know any of it. All I know is this: that hardcore Johnlock shippers are absolutely bonkers, and for the past four years I have had no desire whatsoever to watch the monstrosity that spawned SuperWhoLock. I know that I actually kind of want to watch it now because of a multishipper friend who likes Johnlock, but doesn’t stand for any ship-bashing or malicious fan-wank garbage - niceness and kindness towards other fans and towards the show helping to disperse some of the garbage I always saw Sherlock as being encrusted with. And I know that not all Johnlock shippers are bad, the same way not all Zutara shippers are bad, despite my personal investment in it not being canon. Hell, the Kataang/Zutara conflict shouldn’t have lasted into the New Tens, period. We should have known better. I can see Johnlock shippers as being like any other decent fan of anything, provided that it hasn’t engulfed their life like an asbestos fire.

The idea behind shipping is love. In any way shape or form - familial love for the ships focused on “home”, on tight-knit families being formed. On romantic and erotic love, for those who live vicariously through their ships and swoon at the thought of them, or who want to get fucked by some fictional person/animal/object. Through platonic love, who want to see two friends have an unbreakable bond that keeps all involved parties anchored and strong. And I think it’s fucking deplorable that anyone would taint that feeling with hate. Whether you’re Johnlock or anti-Johnlock, or a militant Avatar shipper, or anyone who will belittle, attack or aim to hurt anyone for not conforming to their way of thinking. People like that are fucking horrendous, soul-sucking people. It’s people like that that makes shipping such an unattractive idea to a great deal of people.

My issue with shipping is the legitimate, mouth-frothing fanaticism exhibited by the truly invested, the hate and genuine desire to hurt other people for not believing in something and the sickening entitlement that so many ships are rife with. For a long time I just hated shipping, period - but I can live with shippers and the concept of shipping, as long as those people can act like composed human beings who don’t bay for blood. I have a specific dislike for SuperWhoLock as a whole, but Sherlock specifically - but given that the fans are okay people, I don’t have a beef with Johnlock as a concept or as a whole.

If the outcome of anything I just said boils your blood and makes you want to “stage an accident” for insulting you or your precious thing, by all means - come at me. But I repeat - the idea behind shipping is love. I fundamentally believe that for shipping as a whole, whether it be for the fictional love of two characters or a fan’s love of those characters interacting. That goes for Johnlock as much as it does any other ship. If my grievances truly offend a majority of Johnlock/TJLC people, then ask yourselves - how twisted do you have to be to take personal offence at being referred to as “about as toxic as it was three years ago, and has managed to garner an even crazier conspiracy squad full of elitists, loudmouthed “enlightened” fans and ridiculous degrees of fan-wank”? Does it hit that close to home that it feels like a personal attack, and does that initial summation invalidate anything I say afterwards by sheer virtue of existing?

Anything in this post could be wrong. I could be being too harsh. But if anything I said provides a flood of hate or a fucking bounty on my head for saying it, then you’re a part of the problem I just described. You are literally problematic.

1 note · View note