fandom-is-for-pleasure:

as-you-will:

fandom-is-for-pleasure:

Question: the fuck’s up with the Purity Brigade’s utter obsession with ‘normality?’ If I screenshotted every single post along the lines of ‘why can’t you freaks be normal?’ or ‘we normal people…’ I’d have a giant binder by now. There’s just something entirely bizarre to me, about a mass of teenagers and young twenty-somethings (at most) in fandom spaces, of all places, massively clamoring for ‘normality’ and using the lack of such as some sort of grievous insult that should be cutting people to the quick. I’ve said it before, but looking back ten years ago, when my lot was at about the same age-range (teens to early twenties LGBTQ+ fannish people), I honestly can’t recall much in the way of behavior like this. Rather the opposite – we’d actively challenge each other to create the darkest, most messed-up shit we could, for enjoyment and just because we could and no one was the boss of us in fandom. 

I also can’t wrap my head around why they don’t seem to comprehend that lack of normality isn’t an insult to quite a lot of people in fandom. I genuinely don’t know how to put it more bluntly than this, so people comprehend – my raison d’etre isn’t to be ‘normal’, to be some cog in regular society, nice and respectable-like. My raison d’etre is to maximize my enjoyment of life and minimize my suffering – and if I can do that for others as well, so much the better. Nowhere in there is ‘normality’ stipulated or even required. So why, exactly, would a lack of normality be offensive to me? 

This is where the overlap of fandom and queer spaces is interesting. Like, hey- if I wanted to be normal, I would not be sat here calling myself queer, would I? I’d be out there, pretending to be cis and straight and gender conforming. And so much of fandom is queer or non conforming, even the anti side of it.

Even apart from that, I’ve been called weird since I was… 8 or so? My behaviour has never lined up with my peers idea of normality. That’s what got me into fandom to begin with. So people calling me a freak now is… yeah? and?

All of the above, pretty much. There’s a reason I’ve got a special sort of contempt for the whole ‘why aren’t you normal?’ caterwauling.

I’m autistic. I make absolutely no bones about this. As a child, I went through everything from getting beaten by my family for my stimming (because knowledge of mental health was such a fucking omnishambles in this country, back then – not that it’s gotten much better now – that people thought a child could be beaten out of ‘undesired behaviors’) to getting rejected by the self-same family when I tried talking to any of them about my special-interest of the moment. The whole thing left me a timorous, immensely anxious child, with the deep-set belief that I should be as silent as a statue, otherwise I’m actively annoying people. 

Fandom was my bloody lifeline. When I came online for the first time and ran into fannish communities, I could properly be myself, for once in my goddamn life. I could squee about my hyper-fixations with people who were just as hyper-fixated, without being called ‘weird’ or ‘strange’ or being punished for it. I could binge on my special-interests and spend endless hours writing and reading complex meta and finally putting my personal skills to use, in an environment where my work could be appreciated. I could engage with whatever content I wanted, in whatever way I wanted and there’d always be at least one other kindred spirit out there.  

Add in the fact that I’m also queer, hedonistic and counter-cultural in general and fandom was frankly, if not paradise for me, then at least something close enough, if I curated my spaces and chose to follow and engage with the right people. All of this adds an extra dimension of ugliness to the whole ‘why can’t you be normal?’ screeching or the constant bandying about of the word ‘freaks’ – as if I didn’t have that tossed at me enough times by homophobes and people who hated me for being visibly neurodivergent and not fitting in with ‘proper’ society. 

I view ‘normality’ as a straitjacket, when trying to wear it myself. It’s perfectly fine if other people have no problems navigating and or dealing with it, but it’s not for me and never will be. I’ve long made my peace with the fact that my purpose in life is making myself and others happy, regardless if I’m considered ‘within the social norms’ or not. Accepting that has done wonders for my mental health. 

Ayup, right on the money! Being involved in fannish activities in any way is considered ‘odd’ at best by mainstream society. From fanfic to cosplay, from shipping anything (no matter how twee and pure and unproblematic) to putting time and effort into fan-art or meta, it’s all ‘a bunch of over-invested weirdos doing over-invested weirdo things,’ with the rare positive take in the press still being used as a punchline by the people reading it. 

Which makes it all the more bizarre when fellow fans engage in obsessive calls for ‘normality’, not knowing they’re setting fire to their own suitcase, so to speak It starts making at least a lick of sense, I suppose, if we look at it as people attempting to establish a social hierarchy. The Purity Brigade aren’t stupid enough to be unaware of what a dim view mainstream society tends to have of fandom, they’re just doing their best to ensure that in the ‘hierarchy of weirdos’, they have a more favorable spot. ‘I may be in fandom, but I’m one of the Good People, at least I don’t engage in [insert fannish activity they think is ‘cringy’ here] or ship [insert ship and shippers they’ve spent years rabidly hating here].’