To be fair, when I open a video talking about fandom sucking, it’s easy to understand why I’m not more popular in fandom spaces. I’m not necessarily nice about certain things, but then —

I don’t have to be.

Three years ago, the James Bond fandom let me down big time with how their immediate response to Skyfall was to ship James Bond with basically everyone but Naomie Harris’ Eve Moneypenny. She often wound up pushed to the side as an ex or as a sassy Black British friend who hooked the two nubs up and made them see the light.

So of course, I got pissed. Because this sort of thing isn’t okay.

It doesn’t matter what you ship, but rather how you ship it. 00q isn’t an inherently problematic ship, but the fandom that focuses on him and Bond at the expense of female characters and characters of color?

They’re plenty problematic.

The response to this video (on tumblr at least) was so harsh that I deleted the posts I made without saving them and I basically dropped out of interacting with the fandom. I’m sorry but when you get called ‘homophobic’ for criticizing (not disliking, mind you) a fanon ship, you know things are a bit borked.

I’m posting this #FlashbackFriday video to show how little fandom has changed as an institution. We can do better, but let’s be real: it’s a lot easier not to.