One of the arguments that Mark Fisher lays out in "Capitalist Realism" is capital's pernicious ability to not just deflect, but absorb and subsume almost any criticism into itself—that there is almost no reaction to capital that can't be defanged and shackled to profit. https://twitter.com/benedict_rs/status/1350561311546109957

We see this dynamic in the conflict between "small art" and "mass media." There is an immense, concerted effort to either find or manufacture representation within the confines of heartless, profit-seeking corporate IPs... https://www.nylon.com/small-art-transgender-marginalized-artists

... and a willingness to not just ignore, but actively denigrate new and small queer voices creating the very content these consumers profess to want. https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism

The issue, I think, is that small art—art made by small people, outside an IP—is not safe. In its cheapness and its accessibility, it exists in opposition to mass media. It has not yet been subsumed into capital, and the stories it tells are often bitter, even unwholesome.

Fanfic bears the hallmarks of small art. That is, in fact, its great attraction: small people, people like you and me, can take someone else's ideas and make it their own. We can use a shared cultural language to tell new stories, queer stories, bitter stories, from old ideas.

Fanfic appears subversive, allowing the ameature (i.e. not profit-seeking) artist to create a "transformative work," ostensibly twisting the corporate message back on itself—to "queer" a character, to highlight an irony or an injustice built into the assumptions of the original.

(And let me interject here that synecdochic's Stargate: Atlantis fic "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" continues to be a favorite of mine, and it's both queer and critical of the military-industrial-scientific complex!)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/6335230 

But there is one foundational truth to fanfic—it is never "our own." Definitionally, it's something you do not and cannot own. You have no rights to earn money from your fanfic, regardless of how unique or transformative it is or how much effort you put into it.

It is a Faustian bargain. This shared cultural language—it isn't free. It comes at the cost of /buying into/ and /being bought out by/ a corporate interest. It is created through estranged labor, labor given away willingly, in the name of "creating a community."

In fact, I would argue that fanfic cannot, ultimately, "be subversive." Fanfic cannot exist in opposition to mass media, because it lives in symbiosis with that very media. It needs the hollow, meaningless carcass of mass media to exist within and gain meaning from.

(CAN a late 90s and early 00s scifi show about American military power in space, one that had a long-standing and well-documented commitment to depicting the US Air Force in a positive and professional light, BE queer and subversive? Can fanfic of that same media truly be so?)

The very nature of fanfic reifies the concept of the milquetoast corporate IP.

And in accepting this, the corners are rounded off. The transgressive is made acceptable (if titillating), the queer less strange. The opposition is subsumed and made part of the whole.

As a queer creator, there is nothing more insulting to see than Marvel laud itself for gay representation by having a background character talk about their same-sex partner for ten seconds in a meaningless scene that can be cut for Chinese censors...

... and then watch as queer creators carry water for the entire franchise, putting in /incredible/ artistic effort to talk about this-or-that show's transgressive undertones, or write deep and insightful stories about the internal life of Corporate IP Character 3.

Fanfic IS an act of creation. But it is an act of creation wed to and subverted by the dynamics of consumption. It asks you to give not just your money but also your time and creativity to create something /for/ capital, to willingly choose to cement its power in your life more.

You give of yourself freely, investing heartless and unfeelingly corporate juggernauts with heart and feeling. Mass media supports this: consumers spending time and effort to freely make a corporate product that much more easily consumed? Incredible!

And the great joy of this is that you, the consumer, are the one that invests the meanings. You've demonstrated, time and again, that all this Corporate IP must do to earn your labor and loyalty is provide a ten-second portent of queer representation...

... and that you will do the rest, investing it with a meaning you create.

The most damning, the most pernicious effect of fanfic is its infantilizing nature. I do not mean in writing style or grammar or punctuation; I mean in its ability to rob us of a shared culture and language that is not owned by mass media.

It makes us as if infants, with no language to use except the symbols it provides for us. It tells us "to make your queer and subversive idea legible to the world, you must use the image of Corporate IP Character 3. People won't understand your idea without us. You need us."

But the truth of the matter is—we don't.

The stories you want to tell are dependent on what is inside of you—the shared experience that makes you human and queer and vulnerable. and broken This is what makes your art relatable, not the window dressing of Corporate IP.

You don't need Captain America or Harry Potter to "give" you that voice. It's already yours. Don't give it away.

Also the point I was trying to go for: https://twitter.com/cephiedvariable/status/1350588049776893961