halfhardtorock:

Fandom left livejournal, a platform that allowed for closed community groups (through friends only sharing) to move to tumblr, a platform that could not provide the same closed community spaces and was already being used by a much younger crowd.

Bitching and complaining about changing fandom demographics is really delusional to me when this change was always inevitable, especially on tumblr. We are not that old school, locked down, adult-oriented community anymore. The culture is changing and growing. And thank god, because that fandom (which all you old timers keep nostalgically recalling) was hyper-racist, hyper-homophobic, hyper-ableist and virulently misogynistic. You can say all you want about how fandom wasn’t ever JUST straight, middle aged white women and was always diverse but the truth is it ALWAYS skewed towards middle aged white women (when there were bnfs, they were almost predominantly middle aged, straight white women) and their needs and their desires.

The people who talk about “purity culture” and the “anti-shipping community” are completely obscuring whats real about fandom now: that changing demographics means changing culture and changing values about what’s socially acceptable to the people here. Like you can all go try to hide in your new throwback lj on pillowfort but you can’t fucking turn back time and force fandom back into the goddamn past where it came from.

Which should be a good thing?? Fandom creative output is so much more interesting now than it has ever ever been. There’s so many more voices and unique narratives and thoughtful ideas and younger ideas. Wanting to go backwards is so weird and embarrassing to me. You all really want old school fandom where people gleefully, openly slutshamed the rl wives of their white slash ship and no one shut it down?? I know shit can be just as toxic now but can’t any of you remember a time when that shit was the norm?? Like go stick your fucking head in that toxic hole again where we all loathed women including ourselves but ill pass.

I think it’s a pretty small thing to have to give up certain kinds of creative works in order to care for the wellbeing of people in fandom social spaces. I am saying this as someone who never thought twice about writing whatever the fuck I wanted back in the day and made the same tired arguments about the difference between fiction and reality/morality, blah blah blah. I’ve come to realize that the things I put out in fandom have the ability to cause harm to people who have just as much right to be here as I do. And that we can’t pretend fanfic is both transformative/an artform but also has no ability to cause harm to readers. We can’t fight to legitimize fandom creative works while at the same time undermining critical engagement with fandom works when we find that engagement unfun or unpleasant.

Anyway I’ve said this all before but there you go again.

We can’t fight to legitimize fandom creative works while at the same time undermining critical engagement with fandom works