snowflake challenge #6: fannish wishlist

[necessarian]

this prompt is for a list of things i, personally, wish for in fandom. i managed to think of four before i ran out of steam. this list is very indulgent and probably a little bit wanky and...  these are my 2020 fandom energies. what can i say.

1) people reading & commenting on my work. i feel like this is super duper self-explanatory so i'm not going to belabour the point, nor do i want to shake anyone by the shoulders and shout, you know? but this is a wishlist. and this is my eternal #1 wish when it comes to fandom. so. yeah.

2) for people to stop leaving mean/backhanded comments on public ao3 bookmarks. like, you know that if you bookmark something publically, everyone can read it, right? including - and especially - the author? some people leave ratings on their bookmarks; clicking through the bookmarks of your fic and seeing 1/5 is really fucking disheartening. i've also seen concrit in bookmark comments, backhanded compliments, and one bookmark of my own work that contained nothing but a demoralising "ehhhhhhhhhh." i mean it's not like... illegal or anything... i just think it's a dick move. it feels a lot like whispering behind someone's back. if you have something to say, say it in the comment box.

3) for the Discourse to slow down. i don't know if i need to explain this one, nor to mention which discourse, just that i think people on both sides of it need to stop and actually think about what they're saying. i have deliberately refrained from weighing into any serious social discourse, ever, because once i start i can't stop and that kind of single-focus debating strangers online is bad for my mental health. but i have so many opinions. my big one is this: SLOW DOWN. twitter in particular is TERRIBLE for discussing big social issues. nobody is getting anywhere with this sort of short-form, snappy, quip-based discourse. it is so tiring. it is so much of why i'm less active in fandom. i just want to be able to breathe clean air, you know?

4) to see an end to the Punching Bag Zacharias Smith trope. okay. this is the big one. if you've seen my dreamwidth journal header, you might have some of idea what i'm talking about. but basically: in a lot of HP fics, people turn to zacharias smith when they decide they need a random character to commit murder, sexual violence (both verbal and physical), bullying, or make bigoted comments. yes, i have seen all of these things, and yes, if you ask, i WILL pull receipts. it's mostly in drarry fic, which is a real shame, because there are so many fics i'd enjoy if not for this thing ruining it. i get the feeling that a few people did it, and then people just started copying it, perpetuating this sort of lazy shorthand which uses character bashing to write about violence and bigotry without actually addressing the issues, and turning it into a trope. and before you say "but if this guy's such an asshole, why is he your favourite character?" - i have THOUSANDS of words of meta in me, a list of every single time he's mentioned in the entire series, and a WIP manifesto which i'll finish and post one day - but basically the fact is zacharias smith does NONE of these things in canon, with the exception of a bit of minor bullying in the form of verbal teasing, and pushing first years out of the way to run away from a battle IN WHICH PEOPLE LITERALLY DIED. (sorry to all of the conscientious objectors of history, but being a draft dodger is just as bad as killing someone yourself!!!!)

like ok, pushing children and taunting people doesn't make him a nice guy - i KNOW he's an arsehole - but also he's a teenage boy, and he is summarily punished with threats of and ACTUAL PHYSICAL VIOLENCE following several of his lame taunts. this is like. A TREND. in the books. HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? so - he is not a murderer. he never says anything bigoted, but people decided that just because he doesn't believe harry, he must be Evil. he is not a sexual predator - the only woman he canonically interacts with is ginny, who i love, but she also does fly straight into the quidditch commentator's tower, crashing it, leaving zacharias lying in a pile of rubble and presumably fucking injured because he fell?? from a TOWER?????? i also want to point out that, as a quidditch player, he would've known cedric, which very obviously explains why he's asking harry what really happened to him. and what does he get? a frosty reception and fred and george threatening to stick a metal rod inside him????? ok, deep breaths. you can see why i have a problem with this. my BIG wish for 2020 and beyond is that this fucking stops so i can read fic where my favourite character is tagged without having to be like "i wonder which kind of bigotry or malice this low-grade asshole will commit in this one :)" - and to stop stumbling upon it in perfectly harmless-looking fics where he isn't tagged.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Agreed on bookmark commentary, though I do enjoy it when it's in Chinese, because you spend all this time puzzling through a translate app to sort it out, and in the end that's kind of its own reward.

Twitter Discourse is SOOOOO discouraging. The demand to be ON and have a hot take on literally everything at all times is just burning actual conversation to the ground. I wish I knew what to do about it, so far I've just come up with same as you have re: not engaging.

[nachodiablo]

1. Hell yeah, it's a wish list, indulge away!

2. That's honestly just rude. You can make bookmarks private for that reason, yk?

3. I agree re: Twitter. A lot of it is a. people wanking to prove how the thing they enjoy just so happens to be the most Correct thing b. people wanking to prove how the thing they hate just so happens to be the Worst Ever thing c. people shutting down actual issues of racism/sexism/transphobia 3. performative wokeness that's not intersectional or productive. d. something of substance that I would love to see addressed but instead it gets ignored.

4. "lazy shorthand which uses character bashing to write about violence and bigotry without actually addressing the issues" YES I'm not familiar w/ Zacharias in fics but I see this a lot, cross fandom, and it's so frustrating!!

[nerakrose]

the zacharias smith thing is so bad that the one time i read a fic in which he wasn't any of those things i was shocked. (i wouldn't be able to tell you which fic it was, this was years ago and i don't remember.)

[paulamcg]

It’s always good to be reminded that we all share the eternal # 1 wish.

I find it strange that people post comments on their bookmarks – and negative ones, why? I thought it would be fics they especially like or plan to read.

And I have to confess I haven’t paid much attention to Zacharias Smith, haven’t met him in fanfic, as I read little Harry’s-generation-centred fic. But I can imagine it must feel terrible to see people treating a character systematically like that when you want to treat him with understanding.