Hello everybody it's Hot Take O'clock in my part of the world and I am prepared.

Ok: I think that the near universal connection btwn queer authors (especially authors of spec fic) and fandom (i.e. suggesting fandom is where ppl worked out their sexual & gender labels) is bad.

It's bad praxis to call fandom subversive--there is literally nothing subversive at all about making Captain America kiss the Winter Soldier.

It's just playing with the literary equivalent of action figures

And you know what? That's fine! It's fine if people are having fun writing stories about the Avengers or whoever.

But stop claiming fandom is some safe space for queer ppl to work out their identities & that this happens universally

Fandom as it stands is still a place where white cis women (who are sometimes also queer) regularly use social justice terms to bully & silence Black/Queer Black fans as well as QPOC in general.

Attempting to make fandom a synecdoche for queer communities & queerness is bad

Being in a fandom is not a personality trait no matter what bad praxis preaches. And it is certainly not a panoptic experience for all queer people or even conterminous with queerness

And fan communities tend to replicate oppressive hierarchies so suggesting it's creating freeing, subversive material fails to account for those hierarchies, tacitly prioritizing cis white women

It's all basically like those gross "do you watch She-ra or are you straight"

And again I want to emphasize: I am not saying it's bad or wrong to write fanfiction & participate in fandom cultures.

Just stop "the subversiveness of fan creations" discourse & don't automatically conflate queer writers with fanfiction writers

Words I used in this thread that I deserve to be punched for

1. Synecdoche
2. Panoptic
3. Coterminous
4. Praxis/discourse