(part two) i’d forget. also, i noticed you tagged a recent gif expressing your joy that chris and tom don’t go on tumblr. i see this a lot on here where people are happy they don’t know about the fandom, are angry when people ask them about thorki during twtter q&as, or say don’t share fandom art with the actors. can you explain the motivation behind this to me? the sharing within the fandom and lack of sharing outside of it fascinates me, but i don’t get it and i’d love more insight.
Posting this reply because I do think it’s important to talk about the divide between fannish people and the people those fannish things are centered around vs not being ‘ashamed’ of fandom.
First, the question about writing! (Basically, my advice was: Read everything and give thought to what does/doesn’t work for you in others’ writing. 😀 ) I don’t keep any kind of documents for it, no. It’s not that I’m opposed, but more that I don’t know how you’d organize that sort of thing. I do keep conversations with friends where one of us has test-read the writing, especially if they’ve noted something that didn’t work or I tried to put into words why something didn’t work for me, but even then I more absorb it and move on to remember it for next time, more than anything. If keeping a document full of notes or something along those lines helps you, though, go for it!
Okay, second, the divide between the actors and the fandom! IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT because… imagine you put a lot of time and effort into building up a character, as an author of the canon or as an actor like Tom has with his version of Loki. It’s a very personal thing, so you have a lot of emotional investment in it. Now, imagine that you have all that emotional investment in it… and you head on out into the fandom. It feels very personal to you, that you had some control over this character, and people are getting it WRONG on the internet. They’re writing sexual stuff that you don’t agree with. They’re writing all sorts of kinky things that just aren’t your cup of tea. They’re arguing characterization that you strongly disagree with. You want to correct them! That’s an incredibly natural instinct, especially if you’re not used to being in fandom. (Which is a place where all views are meant to be welcomed, so long as you’re not hurting anyone.)
In the best case scenario, you just have to let all of that go, you have to just let people have their fun, because that’s what fandom IS. But even that attitude is fairly rare and really difficult to achieve! It’s far easier to go NO NO NO YOU’RE ALL WRONG, to try to police fandom in the sense of corralling it back into the pens that YOU want it to be in. And even if you find middle ground there, it’s probably pretty bizarre and sometimes frustrating to you just to know those things exist.
I’ve written some pretty filthy porn about Loki, I’ve reblogged a whole lot of really filthy art about the character. Now, as someone who’s been in fandom a long time, I can look at those images and mentally separate them from the character I see on the screen, that canon is canon and fandom is fandom. But even still it often frustrates me when people write, say, evil!Thor or dumb!Thor. Imagine how many dozens more times over that frustration would grow if you were the one acting the character! Imagine how uncomfortable you would be if someone shoved explicit porn in your face WITH YOUR FACE ON IT.
It’s uncomfortable all the way around and they should not have to be bombarded with that!
And fandom should not have to have an actor come in and say YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, because fandom isn’t for them, it’s for US. It’s for the fans, who should be free to do whatever they want! Fandom is about everyone having their own take on things, rather than one central person saying what’s right or what’s wrong. That puts the fans in an awkward position of wanting to support the actor, but also feeling betrayed because they were having their own fun on their own time.
And this has happened before. Anne Rice utterly loathes fanfic of her books and shuts it down wherever possible. George Lucas, I’ve heard, used to be okay with it, until he saw some explicit stuff and flipped his shit, so he tried to shut it down as well. Actors don’t have the same power to try to shut it down, but it gets into the same area of them trying to mold fandom into what they want it to be, if they take it badly. Or sometimes fans just take it too far, like the time fans sent Michael Rosenbaum a box of sex toys. Or the utter BATSHIT the Supernatural actors go through and you can SEE how gunshy it’s made them about interacting with the fans sometimes.
It puts everyone in a bad position—if you ask Tom about Thor/Loki, of course he doesn’t see it that way! We joke about it, that he ships it, but seriously he does not. If you bring it up to him—or, worse, show him explicit fanart, ugh—then he’s forced into a horrible position. If he discourages it, he’s being rude to fans who are just doing their own thing and having their own fun. If he encourages it, he’s going to get shit from all the other Marvel workers or anyone who dislikes the idea, because he has a certain amount of legitimacy to him, as the actor of the Loki character in the movies. At best he can just sort of go, “Ah, the fans have their fun in their own ways.” but EVEN THEN he’s giving tacit approval and that could get him a lot of shit.
I don’t mind gen fanart being shared with the actors, because that’s just about expressing your fondness for them. But you get into shipping stuff and just. No. Stop it. Don’t do it. DON’T DO IT. It puts them in horribly awkward positions and it makes the fans look like they can’t control themselves. THORKI IS NOT FOR EVERYONE, there are a whole lot of people who find it supremely squicky for the incest thing (because it IS incest), and trying to cram it down their throat is really, really uncool of the fans.
I remember The Sentinel fandom, where the two lead actors were really physically comfortable with each other, they were constantly touching each other, so of course a huge slash fandom sprung up around them. But it was so widespread and so many people knew about it, that TPTB kind of freaked about it and tried to put a stop to the touching or the close relationship. (Or so I heard, anyway. Info wasn’t as easily spread around, mostly it was rumors at the time, but.) Actors can be the same way. Imagine if Chris or Tom knew how hard we shipped them, if a lot of that Hiddlesworth stuff was shoved in their faces—I would not blame them if they suddenly thought of that every time they were around each other or even so much as laid a hand on a shoulder. It would be pretty normal to back off each other, to make that friendship awkward between them, because it was made weird for them.
So, ultimately, sharing in fandom is great! Share it with anyone who wants to be in the fandom! But absolutely DO NOT force the actors into that sharing, because they are human beings and the sheer variation of all the kinky things in fandom mean that they’re probably not going to be comfortable with a lot of it, and THAT IS THEIR CHOICE. And I think it’s the smart one because they can’t control it, not the best stuff or the worst stuff, not the brilliant stuff or the dumbshit stuff, but they also have to live with that in their head, that THEIR performance inspired this and THEIR face is being used as inspiration for this and just. I wouldn’t want to know about the kind of things fandom would do with my face or say about me, either. Especially on the internet, where people say or do a lot of things they wouldn’t when face to face with someone.
Hopefully that helps clear it up some! 🙂
Slutty Yorick 