Reblog this and let people send you asks (anonymously or not) about how they would describe your fics, your writing style or just anything they’ve thought about when reading your work
one of my most formative fandom experiences was a comment i had gotten on a fic i wrote for a halloween themed fandom event.
this was for a manga/anime, so the fic was a general ghost story obviously set in Japan. the beginning of it involved a pizza delivery and while writing it, i had spent like 30 minutes just double checking tipping customs and the types of pizza they serve and even fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole looking up the history of pizza in Japan.
now, i just like the research part of writing, i do stuff like this because i have fun doing it. and while i was writing this particular fic, i had laughed at myself for my 30 minutes of googling that amounted to 2.5 offhand lines in a 3500 word fic. i didn’t think anyone would care about or even notice those particular details except for me, especially since none of them were relevant to the ghost part of this ghost story.
except, when i had sent this fic to a Japanese friend, the first thing she said to me about it was “OH MY GOD YOU GOT THE PIZZA RIGHT”
and that was the moment when it had really clicked for me. what had just been 30 minutes of effort on my part had become a moment of relief for her. my friend was far more used to reading ethnocentric fic that ranged from unintentional ignorance to outright superiority against part of her culture (the original story’s culture no less). and even with the “innocent” ignorance (heavy quotes on that) far outstripping any outright maliciousness, that’s still so many people saying her culture was not worth learning about. the pizza in my story was a small detail, but i had cared enough to put in some effort to check it. and for her, coming from a fic experience where her norm was bracing for hundreds of inaccuracies born of ignorance, especially at that time after a flood of stories centered around “Halloween as a cultural holiday in the US” premises instead of the “Halloween is a commercial gimmick in Japan” reality, seeing someone put in some effort even for minor story details meant something to her.
this also throws me back to the discourse that arose in a french show fandom a few years ago because there were a lot of fic authors that wrote ‘dollars’ instead of 'euros’– but when people brought this up as a prevalent issue across the fandom but an easy one to fic/watch out for, many of these writers instead pushed back to complain that they were posting stories for free and it wasn’t that big of a deal. which really upset a lot of people, but then this upset was met with a new wave of indignation that people needed to 'get over it’ because they’re writing fic ~just as a hobby~. but, even if 'dollars’ instead of 'euros’wasn’t a big deal, by digging in their heels about the issue, they were saying “your culture isn’t worth even five minutes of my time or effort.”
I’ve been thinking about these things lately because the ethnocentrism in Thai drama fandoms is…staggering. just over the turn of the year, there were waves of Christmas fic for Buddhist characters. and just. Christmas in Thailand is a tourist thing at best. sometimes a pop culture gimmick for international audiences or maybe an offhand high school thing to blow off steam between midterms. it’s not a cultural thing. and even if a character is a part of the Christian minority, a Christian Thai’s holiday customs and culture are going to be vastly different than a Christian’s customs in the Americas or Europe. and while the Christmas fic is at least finished for now, I’m already bracing myself for the Easter fic wave that also seems to pop up for Thai dramas. it’s so frustrating to see this sort of cultural overwrite all the time, especially since most Thai drama holiday works aren’t about Thai holidays.
but the thing that really got me bristling about all of this again was i saw a post the other day where op said that they weren’t going to write [thai drama] fic because they don’t know much about thailand.
what an absolutely appalling statement to make.
google is right there. wikipedia is free. you don’t even have to leave tumblr or AO3 to learn more because there are Thai natives in fandom who write essays to explain common elements of their culture. hell, even just watching these Thai stories and considering the values and messages imparted by the narrative framework and story lens tells you something about that culture. the audacityto look at a culture different from your own and say “this is not worth my effort or time to learn anything more about,” are you kidding me?!?
the messages and values of a story tell you about the writer’s values, which are going to carry their cultural values, beliefs, and biases. Thai culture is going to be heavily relevant to any Thai story, even the ones that aren’t explicitly about Thai culture/customs/etc. (hell, Thai bl/gl as a genre alone– just the fact that queer Thai writers are making these stories in Thailand’s current political climate is highly political, even the “fluffy” ones that don’t seem to make outright political statements.) to approach any story like it was made in a vacuum is to remove the writer(s)’ culture and values and to overwrite them with your own.
especially because this is fandom. these are the lowest stakes to learn! it sucks to see people say things like “but i’m scared i’ll get something wrong” and hold up that fear as a shield to justify their ignorance. no one’s expecting anyone to get every detail right, especially not for a culture that isn’t theirs, just make an effort to learn something new about it. pick out something that caught your eye as different to learn more about and see where it leads you.
and for the record–making a mistake trying to broaden your horizons is a far, far better thing to do than to superimpose your culture on everyone else’s because you’re scared to confront your ignorance.
skimming the notes on this post and im realizing that i failed to articulate something in my heavy focus on fic–
You should not be watching Thai shows and not be learning something about Thai culture.
fanworks like fic, meta, or even art tend to be where cultural blinders are most likely to be revealed because there’s more opportunity for those blinders to be noticed. but this is not a “you need to research every line before you write” post. this is me saying that when you watch foreign shows, you should be learning.
'research’ doesn’t start at writing fic or meta. it starts with seeing something new or different on screen and going “oh, I wonder what that’s about” and looking it up. that ranges from the little things like daily routine habits to bigger things like naming conventions and interpersonal dynamics to the broader things like “what’s the context behind this political/social/etc commentary.”
for lack of better phrasing, you should be slightly confused when watching a foreign show. people from other cultures are going to have different values, perspectives, and experiences than your own, and identifying that confusion gives you a starting point to begin learning more. if you are not encountering anything new in a story, especially a story written by or set in a different culture, you are very likely carrying some sort of blinders, assumptions, or biases that you don’t even notice. exposing yourself to other cultures is a really good way to identify those things and deepen your understanding of even yourself and your values while growing more empathetic and understanding of others.
making things in fandom is a way for some people to engage with other cultures to deepen their understanding. like I know for me, writing fic helps me focus while learning and encourages me to ask questions that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought to ask just watching the show. other people find different ways to engage with a deeper understanding of cultural context, but ultimately the point here is to challenge what we might otherwise consider to be everyone else’s “default.” because if we don’t challenge those biases or open ourselves to empathizing with other people’s experiences, that’s when ignorance turns harmful.
this is what I mean by putting in some effort to research. no one’s looking for perfection before you post or interact in fandom, just an awareness that you are a guest in someone else’s sandbox and that if you do accidentally trespass, you apologize and keep that consideration in mind for the future. if you are a polite guest, you’re not going to be lambasted for a blunder. mistakes are okay if you’re approaching things with consideration and sensitivity– you’re learning, they happen! but you should also be trying to learn outside of just making fandom stuff.
So you’ve written rare pair fic on AO3- how rare are we talking? Select how many fics are tagged for your rarest written pairing on AO3, and let’s see how rare your ship REALLY is.
Reblog and put your rare pair in the tags/comments! I want to see the depths people will go to create, for the most random two characters in the most obscure media.
you’re sitting across from me in a shitty diner in anywhere, america, and i watch you pour too much creamer in your coffee and i think “i love you.” you look up, catching me staring, and for a moment i think i’m brave enough to say it, but i take too long and the moment passes. i take the balled up straw wraper and flick it at you, pretending that was my plan all along. you laugh. i never want to go another day without hearing that laugh. i think i will have all the time in the world to say it.
I don’t know how much more explicit the message of “THIS IS GROOMING” could have been without Be On Cloud superimposing it in all-caps text over every one of Non and his teacher’s scenes. People interpreting that as “cheating” are cracked in the fucking head.
I think a really good relationship dynamic is when one partner is an entirely absurd person and the other partner’s perpetual thought process is, “I adore you. Why are you like this? I’m going to kiss you at such length and with such fervor that you’ll get disoriented and stop being like this for five minutes and I can rest, for fuck’s sake.”
