I've been on both sides. I'm also completely FOR people being able to discuss the thing that they dislike about everything. I've participated in my share of critical discussion.
It's just the way that this discussion can sometimes slip into an otherwise safe space. I might be talking about Fandom X and then suddenly Fandom Y comes up as an example. By the way, Smallville was one of those shows I did watch in as close to a "trashy dumpsterfire" way as is possible for me to watch while still reading and enjoying fic and fandom, but if I was more in love with that canon, it's possible I would have felt hurt about the exact example in that comment. More concretely, it is often that I will be involved in a discussion about Marvel comics, heart aflutter about our shared enjoyment of the thing, and someone will out of nowhere compare MCU unfavourably to the comics and basically trash it. And it's not that I mind them having an opinion like that -- we all like different things! -- but at the moment I'm talking about something enjoyable my guards are down and it is like being hit in the face with a deadfish, basically (to borrow sholio's phrasing from elsewhere). It just sucks the joy out of conversation for me when that happens. It's not even that I'm taking things too seriously, exactly (although the nearer and dearer the fandom is or the more I value the person's opinion about the thing, the more it does sting) it's more like I wish I could have a conversation without having to keep my guard up.
It's really interesting to me to read your posts about this because I definitely understand logically that you fan differently (as many people do, in all kinds of different ways) and it's just really neat to notice where our feelings on this intersect and where they diverge.
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 03:50 am (UTC)It's just the way that this discussion can sometimes slip into an otherwise safe space. I might be talking about Fandom X and then suddenly Fandom Y comes up as an example. By the way, Smallville was one of those shows I did watch in as close to a "trashy dumpsterfire" way as is possible for me to watch while still reading and enjoying fic and fandom, but if I was more in love with that canon, it's possible I would have felt hurt about the exact example in that comment. More concretely, it is often that I will be involved in a discussion about Marvel comics, heart aflutter about our shared enjoyment of the thing, and someone will out of nowhere compare MCU unfavourably to the comics and basically trash it. And it's not that I mind them having an opinion like that -- we all like different things! -- but at the moment I'm talking about something enjoyable my guards are down and it is like being hit in the face with a deadfish, basically (to borrow sholio's phrasing from elsewhere). It just sucks the joy out of conversation for me when that happens. It's not even that I'm taking things too seriously, exactly (although the nearer and dearer the fandom is or the more I value the person's opinion about the thing, the more it does sting) it's more like I wish I could have a conversation without having to keep my guard up.
It's really interesting to me to read your posts about this because I definitely understand logically that you fan differently (as many people do, in all kinds of different ways) and it's just really neat to notice where our feelings on this intersect and where they diverge.