These are my opening statements from earlier today on the FSN plenary. If you didn’t get a chance to see the plenary or you weren’t at FSN at all, here’s my opening comments. Please feel free to ask for clarifications and whatnot. Thanks.
My work primarily covers racism and race in fandom. It actively confronts whiteness and antiblackness – which, increasingly, becomes a multi-fandom bonding activity open to other people of color including Black fans.
Different from many fan studies scholars out and about, I’ve always been actively entangled with fandom on the ground, closer in real time to a reporter thanks to the speed with which I cover fandom practices or dustups. I screencap as second nature, download videos that I sense will be gone by the end of the day, and constantly archive webpages because of the way that modern day online fandom speeds on by.
So I didn’t read a lot or consume content outside of pure relaxation or research purposes this month. I have been busy as hell. I keep looking at my emails and guiltily slinking away because I have so much to do and limited time to do it because it’s also birthmonth, the one month where I’m basically absolutely allowed to do nothing at all. (Or so I’m telling myself.) Which means that I basically read fan fiction, watched horror movies with BTS Nieceling… and restarted My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic from the beginning. That’s largely it.
Fans had begun to notice him calling his male friends “hubby,” “bae,” and “lover” on Twitter and Instagram, which rang off alarms with swathes of rap’s homophobic fans. Straight men of all ages still use “pause,” so his terms of affection caught a side-eye from many, as did a photo of him and a hospital-bed-bound male friend feeding each other from double cups, as well as a video of him doing a bumbling, twerk-adjace dance to his “Perk” song. A YouTube commenter on the dancing video noted, “For those who say he isn’t gay… explain this, don’t worry, I have time,” capturing the sentiment of many rap listeners at the time.
When asked about his “bae” comments, he clarified, “It’s the language. It’s nothing stupid and fruity going on. It’s the way we talk, it’s the way we live. Those are my baes, those are my lovers, my hubbies, whatever you want to call them.”
First of all, I love the concept of a “Young Thug Week” anywhere.
A little early because after this point I’ll be super busy BUT… have yourself some birthday omegaverse. The first sequel is already in progress!! (If you’re not an adult or you’re not into omegaverse, please don’t read this! Thanks!)
Makoto has long been ostracized because of his odd hobbies and a sexual kink others would see as disgusting. One day he finds a book on summoning demons and manages to summon the intimidatingly beautiful and rather chatty Archduke J. The demon offers to grant Makoto’s deepest twisted desire in exchange for his life. Once Makoto has sated his demented appetites, he fulfills his end of the bargain, only to find he’s been reborn as a monster…in hell!
Content Warnings: gore, dubious consent, flat out lack of consent, body horror, betrayal, cannibalism, complicated power dynamics, death and mutilation, corruption/corruption kink, murder
Okay! So if none of this has scared y’all away, I’m here to give away digital copies of Ryo Suzuri’s MADK!
This is my favorite erotic horror series ever – and I have read plenty. I love the dynamic between Mako and Archduke J as well as how Mako’s relationships with the other demons across the series evolves. This is a deeply dark series based on the premise of getting what you desire when what you want is deeply disturbing. I love Mako and I talked about how appealing he is as a protagonist to me over in one bonus episode of my podcast a few months ago.
I think MADK is thrilling, incredibly delicious, and so dark I wanna reach for a candle. It’s very similar to Tokyo Ghoul and Kaneki’s arc of becoming more monstrous and more human, but there’s the added bonus of uh… incredibly improbable sex. Like it’s wild how bodies work in this series and I love it.
If I could only read one manga series for the rest of my life, it’d be this one. Honestly.
And that’s why I’m choosing to give away copies!
TO ENTER: Be over 18 and use your real email address when you leave a comment below about what your favorite piece of horror in the world is. (While you don’t get bonus points for erotic horror, I’d appreciate it nonetheless!) You can comment using your social media or your wordpress account! Message me on Twitter or via the contact form if your comment doesn’t show up by like 9AM the following day.
Giveaway closes 10/23 at 11PM! I’ll email the winner!!
A birthmonth surprise for y’all! Some sweet sweet, semi-sexy Castlevania content for those of y’all who are into that. I have literally no idea how to open comments on that site at any point (if you can comment on something, please do because I do not know what I did wrong there).
For Birthmonth 2021, one of the non-omegaverse gifts I have chosen to bestow upon you all is… some Castlevania fan fiction. Canon adjacent (not necessarily compliant) and set across different characters/pairings around the series. All things are vaguely canon levels of sexy. Probably.
Image A: The “Don’t make me tap the sign” meme with bottom text that reads: “Declaring that the real problem with how we talk about racism is “angry” POC and not racists harming and harassing them is… racist. Bitch.”
Image B: The “Don’t make me tap the sign” mtoeme with bottom text that reads: “If you’re angrier at POC in any fandom for being “mean” – cussing, snarking, etc. – when speaking about racism in fandom than you are at racists for BEING RACIST IN FANDOM… you’re a fucking racist.
Why do racists keep getting to define the rules of engagement? Why do they get to position themselves as neutral and unbiased, when they’re clearly biased in favor of white supremacy in a given space? Why is it that racists get to declare POC “too angry” to listen to and have people listen to them instead… As they angrily insult the “too mean” POC simply asking people to stop being less racist. Do people think this isn’t their entire goal? To make listening to anti racists/stopping racism in any space or capacity too hard or scary to do.
It’s wild that we have to be nice to racists… or else they won’t listen to us? Because kindness is so important to them.
Apparently.
Except… have you ever noticed that the people who insist that conversations about racism just have to be done at their tone and in a way that they’ve previously signed off… are some of the nastiest assholes on the internet?
The best way to defeat bigotry is to politely tell them that you disagree with their views. Anything else will only help them.
If this sounds ridiculous to you, know that it also sounds ridiculous to me every time I hear versions of it.
As Popova points out, what “dark fic” is ultimately depends on individual reader and creator interpretations of the trope or pairing. This, along with the intensity of the dark content and what it’s used for in the story, leads to people forming personal catalogs of dark content on main, works they enjoy and ones they very much don’t. Across fandoms and age groups within fandoms, two people may have vastly different understandings of what dark fic looks like and what kind of dark fic they’re okay with consuming and creating.
One person might view Real Person Fiction itself as “dark fic,” because it crosses established personal boundaries for the relationships we have with celebrities and ones they have with each other. Another one might only count RPF that uses extreme elements: for example, an alternate universe that places characters from an idol group in the universe of The Purge and has them enact horrific violence against each other. Even Omegaverse, my favorite trope/genre in fandom ever, can be considered dark fic by some people, because it often serves up gender/bio essentialist worldbuilding wrapped around some werewolf-y characters getting intimate.
I’ve wanted to talk about the concept of “dark fic” – which my expert fans agree is one of those unhelpfully broad fandom terms that says everything but means… less than you’d think – for a hot minute now. For starters, y’all know I don’t actually like fandom terms that are hard to define because at the end of the day we’re all sitting here like “okay but what actually are you trying to say here” and “dark fic” is no different.
Especially when it comes to not uh… making liking or hating it your personality. Both things are extremely embarrassing for me to see because I don’t think that they’re healthy approaches to content because the positioning alone (interested/hating) isn’t enough to give you a good grasp of a person especially when you consider that one person’s dark and upsetting content is… someone else’s Tuesday afternoon.
Over on Henry Jenkins’ site, he’s using his platform to host what he’s calling a “Global Fandom Jamboree” that focuses on scholars speaking on their work on their own and with the other scholars in their field, more or less.
I won’t be linking to everything in roundups like this again, but I’ll be tweeting infrequently about the parts of this project that really stand out to me. And of course, if they move me extra hard, they’ll probably wind up in my end of the month link post!
Fans can react in concerning ways when their celebrity favorites screw up or misspeak in ways that hurt fans. It’s as if the attachment to a particular celebrity unlocks a desire to do whatever possible to maintain that celeb’s power and positive press. Even if the celebrity has been accused of actual crimes, even if we have proof of them doing something inexcusable, their stans will rally in order to protect them from criticism and accountability.
Enter: Nicki Minaj and the hold she has on her fans, known as Barbz. Not only do a subset of fans feel personal responsibility to promote her, but she herself has actively mobilized them over the years against people that she is in conflict with, on scales both large and small.
Once again, I forgot to post this when it went up uh… two weeks ago.
Nicki Minaj is just… a really good example of what happens when celebs actively make the choice to hurt people. She has millions of dollars, a fanbase that loves her, and some level of talent. And what has she spent a lot of 2021 doing? Antagonizing critics, harassing the woman her husband harmed when she was a teenager, and beefing publicly with other celebrities and even just random social media users. Like what got into Nicki’s head to make her think defending former Little Mix member Jesy Nelson’s blackfishing and attacking actual Black woman Leigh Anne Pinnock for calling it out was in any way necessary?
If I ever reach some sort of financial success and you see me out here fighting with people on social media – especially if I’m dead wrong – understand that something has gone horribly wrong.
September's first Fan Service column for @TeenVogue was all about what fans can do when their faves mess up. Here's a more specific example thanks to one artist who's been in the news lately. Major thanks to @pablotheedon or speaking with me for this!https://t.co/dzTcoyaHE3
I am not going to waste too much energy on Jesy Nelson but I will point out that as hard as she’s blackfishing and trying to present herself as Extremely Biracial Black Woman, she’s also actively weaponizing white women tears and activating white/queer fandom (via stan twt)
Especially against Leigh-Anne, an actual Black woman. And because she’s got Nicki in her corner defending her blackfishing (hypocritical after the Miley Cyrus stuff), this means that her non-Black fans will feel extra empowered to be actively antiblack towards LA & her Black fans
She wants to be Black (visually) but also clings to her white womanhood, the thing that lets her get sympathy and causes people to defend her violently, something that actually no one does FOR Black women but is often aimed at them in different fandoms.
It’s been a while since we had a fandom racism bingo card. Last time, it was my partially tongue-in-cheek one about the fandoms for Korean pop and hip hop with a heavy tilt towards cultural appropriation and antiblackness. This time, like it says on the label, it’s about misogynoir in fandom.
As always, I do look towards my fannish past with this, and I recommend people learn their fandom history about the nature of bingo cards to deliver understanding of/clown on tough topics… like this one about racism in the immediate aftermath of racefail 09. It’s not an inherently “anti” thing unless you’re one of the extremely fandom-minded individuals that believes criticism of fandom at any any level or with any sharpness is automatically “anti fandom” in action and if you think that… well.
Anyway, one statement that lives in my mind on the regular comes from a speech Malcolm X gave in 1962 at Ronald Stokes’ funeral where he said that
“The most disrespected woman in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.”
Fandom, especially when it comes to antiblackness, is not exempt from the issues that plague the wider world.
In fandom, misogynoir is accepted as a thing people do and it always has been acceptable in fandom at large regardless of how much people claim fandom as a space for women. Despite the perception that queer/women’s fandom is super progressive, it’s become increasingly clear to Black fans in particular that that’s far from the case. Misogynoir – aimed at Black fans, celebrities, and characters – is an acceptable norm in fandom and something that isn’t just defended, but that has become a bonding activity on a level that even sees other Black people partaking in it to build and maintain community bonds, not just non-Black people.
NOW BEFORE WE GET INTO THE EXPLANATIONS, PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU’RE SENSITIVE AND NEED PEOPLE TO BE NICE WHEN COMPLAINING ABOUT RACISM THEY SEE AND EXPERIENCE, THIS IS NOT THE POST FOR YOU.
Back in 2019, I wrote What Fandom Racism Looks Like: PickMe POC to talk about trends I’d been noticing in transformative fandom – queer/women’s fandom focusing on creating transformative fandom works to (re) claim the text as their own – where some fans of color would trot themselves into the line of fire and set themselves up as racists’ first line of defense from “mean” people of color who dare to talk about racism in fandom.
September was super busy and I’m really satisfied with everything I’ve done. Once again, half of it can’t be revealed yet because it’s stuff I did for upcoming work, but the other half of it has been… pretty great content dropped on my website and Patreon.
The biggest thing that happened in September was that I attended Fiyah Magazine’s Fiyahcon 2021 – and had a great time attending and speaking on panels. I also… won The 2021 Ignyte Critics Award??
Jeanne and I catch up and compare notes about the rest of Loki, how our expectations were met, exceeded, or underwhelmed , and the current state of fandom discourse (which has managed to shift so hard in just a matter of months).
Stitch's Media Mix 
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