Fandom Snowflake 2023 Challenge #3: Gripes, Complaints, and Aggravations

[silveradept]

Challenge #3 asks us to unburden ourselves of the things we carry and hide.

Okay, hear me out…

I know Snowflake is sunshine and rainbows and singing from the rooftops all the lovely and brilliant that is being in a fandom. But, let’s be honest. Sometimes—like with other thing—there are sucky parts, heartbreak parts and just plain UGH parts. Rather than holding onto those slights and resentments, or burying them and pretending they don’t exist, just to have them slowly and almost imperceptibly seep into the rest of the challenges this month, why don’t we just let it all out?

In your own space, Scream Into the Void. Get it all out.

For those of us who celebrate Festivus for the rest of us, this will be familiar. We call it “Airing of Grievances” and it is actually very satisfying, whether you do it tongue in cheek, get introspective or just literally scream.

Things to note with this challenge. Please do let readers know if you want or need words of encouragement or advice to make it better--some of us don’t, we just want to vent. Also, while we still totally encourage everyone to visit participants journals and spread the love and the cheer, do prepare yourself and don’t feel obligated to spend more time than is healthy for you in other people’s negative. It’s called a void for a reason.

There's so much going on in my life that I wish a primal scream would be enough to physically get it out of my body, in some Ghibli-ish manner, and thus, having managed to exhume it from my body, I could be better, healed, cleansed of what afflicts me. In a Ghibli-ish piece, though, that external thing would have to be subdued and controlled and brought down to a manageable size by working through the issues that gave rise to its existence.

I wish we weren't headed into the fourth year of a global disease outbreak that very few people with the power to try and make it stop are interested in getting it to stop. I wish there weren't people with enough power and wealth to be able to dictate when people had to return to work and school and the rest while it was and is unsafe to do so.

I hate that my body has been in rebellion to me for several months now, with several strategies not providing a cure, but a greater likelihood of better days. I hate complaining about this, because it's only been recently and other people have been dealing with worse for longer, and I hate that I've internalized the message that there is a hierarchy of suffering and use it to downplay my own suffering, that I have to hurt more before I am worthy of sympathy for what is happening. (I don't viscerally understand how someone can have a self-conception of being enough by themselves, regardless of mistakes, regardless of faults, regardless of the opinions of others. I'm working on it, but it is still mostly foreign to me.)

ND Stevenson shouldn't have had to fight so hard to have two women save the world through their live for each other. The kiss between Korra and Asami should have been awhile the series was still on the network, rather than after it had been shunted to a back corner of the Nickelodeon website. Queer content is not automatically PG-13 or T-rated. Making a protagonist non-white does not automatically mean the work is political. I detest that people are being told their identities aren't real and their perspectives don't matter because some people refuse to acknowledge that the world is greater and stranger than what is contained in their philosophies. I am concerned about the campaigns underway to remove entire swaths of identity, of relationships, of ideas from books, classrooms, and fandom as well. (There are many things that should be warned for in fandom, but very few things that should be excised, as canon and fandom are often the way we work through our feelings (and sometimes, our traumas) around those issues.) I am repulsed at the way that advertisers and payment procssors have gained control over what content is shown and what isn't

I wish the phrase "the missing stair" wasn't part of our lexicon, because people who would become missing stairs are found early and asked to leave before they could do damage to others. Same for "milkshake duck." It seems unjust and unfair that people who consistently choose harmful actions can still make great works, but justice, as I am reminded on the yearly Hogfather rewatch, is a Pratchettian Big Lie.

I wish studios didn't decide to buy rights without ever intending to make a work, and that they didn't decide to spike works because it would be better for the bottom line as a tax write-off than an actually released work. I wish there was no artificial scarcity in a world of perfect digital copies, and that everything made available to stream was required to have a way that it could be owned. There is no star in this universe hot enough to come within two ticks of a logarithmic scale from my hated for Digital Rights Management.

I am used to feeling outside, even when on the inside. Because I was socialized (and society still reinforces, in subtle ways) that transformative fandom is screaming women and girls who are obsessed with M/M pairings, that the only way for me to like a series about technicolor ponies and friendship was ironically or as a furry more interested in clop than in the storytelling and characters, and that all of our media needs to cater to boys and men, because they won't watch shows or read books where girls and women are strong or protagonists and boys are gentle and non-toxic.

Fuck This Shit. All Of It.

I would like a hug. I could use a nap. I wish we could be our full and authentic selves as much as possible. And most of these things are not things that I can single-handedly change to a better form. Advice is welcome, but may not be followed. Commiseration is helpful, if only to know that I am not alone.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Big hugs from here. loganberrybunny posts about loving MLP unironically and he's cool.

[silveradept]

Thank you for the hugs and the recommendation. I'll have to go check it out.

[azurelunatic]

All the hugs.

[silveradept]

Thank you.

[nanila]

Many commiserations.

[silveradept]

Appreciated.

[alexseanchai]

🧸🧸🧸

[silveradept]

🧸

[wingedcatgirl]

*faxes some hugs*

[silveradept]

Thank you. It'll be a bit before they get here, because fax, but they're appreciated all the same.

[svgurl]

*hugs* I agree with everything you said here and you are definitely not alone.

Making a protagonist non-white does not automatically mean the work is political.
THIS.

[silveradept]

Thank you for the hugs and the solidarity.

[shipperslist]

*offers a tight, long hug with tea and cookies*

[silveradept]

Thank you. The hugs, tea, and cookies are appreciated.