Meta fandom thoughts

[isi]

So something pinging around in my brain lately is fandom, shipping, and my place in the fandom universe. There's some relevant videos by a YouTube vlogger called "danisnotonfire," who has some entertaining videos on fan culture and shipping. Of course, they made me think of this little place.

I know many of you have been involved in fandom and fanfiction for years, so you're used to not finding any of this remotely weird, but I'm actually still getting used to it. I had never written fanfiction about anything until my golden record fic, and I'm even writing more. Mildly shippy ones, even. I still find it weird that I'm compelled to do this, after having never felt the urge to do anything of the sort before, even though I was aware of its existence and knew people were were involved in such things as these. It's like I have to remind myself every day, "You drank the fandom Kool Aid. Get over it." But it's all been silly fun, which is why I've been doing it.

The other day someone brought up the possibility of asking the Mindcrackers how they felt about shipping, with the response being "the first rule of RPF" (RPF being an abbreviation I've also never heard of before this community). That just got me thinking: is it the same thing? I mean, yeah, I don't think anyone should spam the guys with links to any NSFW fanfics about them, but aren't they largely already aware of just the shipping aspect? Just considering some of the fanart that gets posted to the reddit, like this particularly risque one that both Pause and Beef have seen. Does that violate the RPF rule? Just something I've been wondering.

Comments

[koalaed]

The major line that I've seen between this comm and the usual 'shippy' reddit posts is sincerity of shipping. The reddit posts are normally more tongue in cheek, as if the whole idea of pairing people together is a joke, and it rarely gets NSFW. Here, on the other hand, ships are often times more sincere. For example, some people ship Jason and John seriously (as either a fictional or a real life couple). Others have a large devotion to a certain pairing and its dynamic, so they watch videos and discuss how the way the mindcrackers interact in those videos could influence their interpretation of a pairing.

There's a large scale of sincerity when it comes to shipping, and the Mindcrackers are okay with joking shipping. We don't know how okay they are with more sincere shipping, especially because some of them are already in committed relationships. They could be okay with it, or it could make them uncomfortable. That's how I see it, at least.

[isi]

That makes sense. The intended effect of what you're doing makes a difference. Like you said, most of the shippy fanart is played for laughs, whereas a lot of the fanfic here is designed to have a different effect. Like whatever you'd get out of reading others forms of romance, or smut for that matter.

[damnreddit]

Right. Sincerity might not be the right word, because at least for me there is a large gap between what I write about or talk about here and what I think about the real person behind the character or idea under discussion. Various personality traits or other details might cross the gap, but ultimately the Etho I've written about as a character occupies an entirely different mental space (or spaces) from Etho the person.

I've been in fandoms before, including fanfic communities, but my only experience with any form of RPF was very negative. So this is new to me.

[crystalllized]

Oh my god, that shipping video, Cherimon is in fact a pairing that I've spent some time on, so that hit me right in the awesome hilarity feels. Charlie did an excellent video about it, and Alex responded with a video where he wrote femmeslash for two other YouTube vloggers, and....aww man, vloggers are awesome.

I don't know why, but there's something different between fan fiction and fan art. Personally I think some of the art that goes on the subreddit is too much...like koalaed said, it has to do with the severity. Sixelona's drawings were always very tongue-in-cheek, as we're Gomeric's, and they mostly stuck to OOG, who basically slash themselves. It's grown quite a bit since then, and I think the fandom is getting a little lax on putting any thought into what they put on the subreddit. There was a really horribly unbeta'ed Pause/Beef fic even posted not too long ago, and that made me cringe. No, just no.

This fandom is a weird one because of the characters that each person creates for themselves...sometimes it seems like Guude and Jason are entirely different people, and sometimes the lines cross. John and BdoubleO have a lot in common, but then there are cases like Nebris, who is a villain and a cheater and all-around sneaky bad guy, who in real life loves Disney movies and hanging out with friends and football. Zisteau probably isn't a pyromaniac with OCD, and Vechs isn't an evil genius with a finely-tuned sense of sadism, but those are the characters they play for us, because we like it. What's the difference between Jason/John and Guude/Bdubs? I think that's something we're all still figuring out. For me, I'm comfortable writing Guude/Bdubs, but not Jason/John, and I could not for the life of me tell you why. I've written real-person fiction about the actual, real people before. I've done so at length. But for some reason, given the choice between the person and their character, I will always feel wayyyy more comfortable with the character.

[placeblocks]

I have more to add to this later but one thing I wanted to say with regards to Jason/John vs. Guude/Bdubs, is I know a lot more about Guude than I do Jason and likewise Bdubs vs. John. I know where Guude lives, I know what he eats, where he is likely to sleep, how to get around his "neighborhood." I know how he dresses, moves, and how he reacts to every-day stimulation. I dont' know most of that about Jason. I know Jason lives in NC and I've sort of seen his house and know it's sort of in the woods, but I'd have to do so much research to write him comfortably. I know even less about John, or his living arrangements, or what he eats for lunch, etc. I could make things up, certainly, but it's not comfortable. I can easily just jump in and write Guude because I know so much about him.

That doesn't begin to touch the fact that Guude is a character whereas Jason isn't, as well.

[isi]

I know enough about Charlie and Nerimon to know who they are and kind of recognize them, and I like some of Alex Day's music, but beyond that I haven't really watched them. Though I am interested in those videos you mentioned.

As for the character versus person part, there have been other versions of this conversation before, and I agree with you that I'd prefer writing about their characters rather than who they actually are in real life. There's always going to be some fictionalized aspects no matter which version you write, because I don't know ever single thing about them, but having those aspects of their characters that are already fictionalized make it seem more "okay" to me. Besides, that's the part that's being offered for our entertainment in their videos-- their on camera persona. As much as their real selves often bleed over, it's not necessarily the same as knowing who they are.

[crystalllized]

Tumblr Weirdness
YouTube Slash Fiction

I used to watch them both religiously, but I think some of Alex's success may have gotten to him...he's just not as awesome anymore. I still sub to him and watch him on occasion, though.

[isi]

Hee, that was really funny. The internet is indeed rather weird, and I don't think I'd have it any other way.

[theropod]

I've never done this RPF stuff before now, it's so strange and new to be compared to writing relatively safe things like Optimus Prime or Chris Redfield, you know?

Anyway, yeah, I'm much happier writing about the characters portrayed by the skins than I am with the real people behind the computer screens. There's probably no way I can really wrap my head around the real people bit. I'm much happier with the Zombie Pigman, ambiguous Time Lord / explorer and so on.

[mindcrack_love]

This is very interesting for me because of *why* I like RPF so much.

I'm a pretty voracious consumer of information. If I get into something fictional (an anime, a video game, a novel) I read every line, I get deep into the meta, I consume and consume and consume. But at some point the canon ends and I run out of things to say, even in communities like this one and even with tons of fanworks.

Dealing with real people though - their story never ends and there's always more facets to their personality I'm learning, and researching those things is immensely fascinating to me - and, I think, makes for more interesting characters for when I do make fiction. I don't think Jason and John are really in love with each other in anything more than a Platonic way, but figuring out how it *would* work if that fact changed given all their real life personality and circumstances is an interesting puzzle for me.

My last fandom, as I've said before, was European soccer/football, focusing especially on the German league and national team. In real life, Philipp Lahm is an amazing defender and leader, a team captain of high class. He's short for a footballer and doesn't look his age and is kinda nerdy (he's done ads for Nintendo before, which I find AMAZING). He's also certainly ambitious and too honest for his own damn good and comes from a football lineage/club that is thought of as arrogant - and he wears that with pride. He almost certainly never dated fellow player Andreas Ottl and also almost certainly is not a regular crossdresser (though who knows) but I wrote that fic anyway (warning for NSFW). I put a lot of heart and soul into that fanfic - partially because it was a thinly veiled way to tell a story I really wanted and needed to get out, but also because I wanted it to still fit. I wanted it to be as realistic as it could be for two semi-professional footballers in Munich to be in a closeted relationship and to experiment with gender roles and values. I'd like to think I succeeded, but whether or not I did, half the fun was the research - what life would really have been like for Fips and Andi at 17, and if they *were* dating what ways they would have shown it and what ways they would have explored the city they lived in and the life they led.

So now I'm writing Mindcrack fic, and I'm writing somewhere between "real person" and "character" fic and trying to figure out where one ends and the other begins - and it's hard, and it should be hard, and that's FASCINATING. And I'm researching so many things - about the lives of these interesting, complex, deep people - and that's deeply fulfilling for me.

I never knew Guude went to culinary school until recently, and now I'm pondering what he's like in the kitchen, whether he's super tidy or super disorganized, if he's a snob about spices, if he comes up with home solutions to things from restaurant kitchens, what kind of cuisine he loves to make, etc. The thing leaked a while back with Bdubs singing in church had me wondering about the nature of his faith, his family's involvement (AssyrianAssassin was in the video as well as a bassist and their father was in another video on that channel preaching), and the like. These aren't facets we would get if we only knew them as gamers.

Even the ones that are more certainly "characters" get parts of this from the real life that does leak through. We know real!Etho's taste in snacks (lots of muffins, especially banana nut muffins) and his intense loyalty to Canada (he was so ~offended when Bdubs dissed Tim Horton's during FLoBathon). There are no fancy coffee machines in Minecraft and martial arts is reduced to ineffective punching, but Zisteau without a Chemex and a long rant about martial arts techniques isn't Zisteau. I'm half curious to see if someone will make more fanart of tattooed zombie pigmen after what we know about Zisteau's own ink as well.

And we're constantly getting new content, and constantly learning new things. Will someone not offer cookies to Minecraft!Kurt knowing real!Kurt is probably gluten intolerant/allergic? How do we interpret the fact that Matthew (real!MC) owns an orange suit and a shard of lapis? How about the fact that Stefan (real!Doc) might get implants to support his injured knee and thus might actually be a little more cybernetic than we thought?

[isi]

You touched on a thought I had myself a little while ago, about how other forms of fictional content eventually run out. A TV show ends, and then that's all there is, until years later when they finally come out with the follow up graphic novels, but even then it doesn't feel like enough. With this, there may not be neat story arcs or carefully planned plot twists after episodes of buildup, but you never run out of content. As long as the Mindcrack brand exists, there will always be more. And actually, I think the lack of a cohesive story line contributes to my new found desire to write one. I want to find patterns and associations in the mass of everything there is, so I can make up my own to create that, and that there is no "official" story I think gives me more freedom to make whatever connections I want. That could also tie into what you were saying about how their real selves might cross over into their in game personas. Also, that comment about cybernetic Doc was amazing.

[mindcrack_love]

"Cybernetic Doc" is actually a comment he made himself when getting checked up for that surgery, so I will take no credit. :P

I sincerely hope these guys' careers last as long if not longer than most professional athletes' do - partially because being defined by only a decade or so of your life is sad, but also because then we truly will never run out of content, run out of things to say and learn, and the characters will continue to grow and change over time (another huge "advantage" to studying real people from a information hoarder standpoint - it's never complete).

[isi]

Ah, I've been terrible at keeping up with Doc, so that explains why I didn't recognize that idea as his, but either way it's really interesting how that works out.

[placeblocks]

That picture of Pause and Beef's reaction to it especially has made me kind of sad the last day or two, not gonna lie. Usually they play along with stuff like that, but Beef's reaction is "So gross..." I feel like lately he's been "playing along" less and less, and it worries me that... I dunno. Something happened or he's not as okay with the shipping as he thought or something. I'm probably reading into it too much, because his episode today he discussed making out with Pyro and Avidya and other innuendo, but, I dunno. It left me wondering. :(

As for the RPF stuff, it's a very thin line here, as others have discussed. But there's definitely a difference between Beef and Dan, and I think most of the guys are fine with the innuendo shipping because most of them encourage it themselves. (I mean, hello, Pause's reaction to the Beef vs. Millbee GenerikB prank!) So, shippy art of the characters is fine. And Sixelona even drew Guude and Bdubs snuggling in bed together at Minecon, so I feel like some levels of RPF are even accepted, so long as you don't get tin-hatty about it, or link them to pornographic art/fic or bad nude photomanips. I wouldn't personally post shippy art/fics to the reddit, but I think it can survive to a degree and not cross the "Don't talk about RPF to them" line.

Obviously I'd just use your discretion. This is also a really weird fandom because the line between character and person is so thin, especially for some of them, and they're so CLOSE to fandom. In the average TV or movie fandom, you really have to go WAY out of your way to get this sort of material to them. Here, there's a decent chance that any of the given Mindcrackers are reading this post because they're bored and stumbled across it. If you don't know that this comm exists and you want to try to make friends, or don't really realize how often the Mindcrackers read the reddit, I can totally see why people would post fan art or fic to the reddit

As an aside, did anyone contact the artist of that Pause drawing and tell them about this place?

[crystalllized]

The comment was actually "So gross... XD" which I took to mean he was being silly. *shrug*

[isi]

Yeah, with the XD face, I'll assume he found it at least a little funny. But I find Pause's emoticon-less "I don't even..." a little more ambiguous.

[koalaed]

Yeah, I understood their responses as being both understanding of the community's production of such fanart while also being uncomfortable/negative about it. I think it just went a little too far, with the way Pause in that picture is posed and such, for them to know how to respond. :)

(Although I have to admit, I viewed the art in question originally as a joke about the supposed Beef/Pause/Millbee triangle, not as a real shipping piece.)

[milestofu]

For me, I crossed the line into RPF a long time ago, which is why I'm posting here without a sock and generally without shame. I write about K-Pop (Korean Pop) Idols on a semi-regular basis, most of which are shippy, and while that fandom is massive, I would never want the people I'm writing about to read it.

Same with here. I think there's a line that shouldn't be crossed and that line is showing them the particularly shippy things you've written (or drawn). That's just my personal opinion; I would be mortified if any of them read anything I wrote.

[mindcrack_love]

I guess the question is: besides instinct, considering that Jason has watched someone draw him in bed with his platonic friend and enjoyed it and laughed, considering that he has even defended a tounge-in-cheek shipper from haters on the Internet - why would you be embarrassed?

It's a good question and I can't really answer it other than being worried about crossing a line, and being worried that others will not be as forgiving as Jason is.

(Edit: I'll also note that my username for soccer RPF is different from my "main" username for things like Minecraft. This is partially because I originally intended to just be a lurker in that fandom and that backfired, but also because I like an extra layer of identity between myself and my idols. It's a paper thin layer, just like how this username can be very easily traced to my "real" name if people do the research, but most people won't do the research, I think.)

Personally I would be amused and delighted if people wrote RPF of myself, even RPS of myself with people other than my partner. It shows that people care about my life and want to study it and are fascinated by it and it inspires them to make stories - and I think that'd be flattering. But I've also been a fangirl for over a decade and an RPF fan for at least half of that time, so perhaps my view is different.

[milestofu]

It just doesn't sit well with me, personally. I don't want them to see or know about anything I write because it doesn't make me comfortable. If I found out they did read anything of mine, I'd probably take everything down and disappear. I've also been a fan of RPF for years, but when it comes to my things, I don't want them to see it.

Which is kinda weird, because like you, I'd find it amusing if I got RPF written about myself and not at all offended.