So I saw a post a few days ago. The gist of it basically was that tumblr culture is fucked because people simply aren’t allowed to sympathize with villains anymore. “Remember all the Loki sympathy?” The post asks. “Whatever happened to that?” So I’ve been thinking two things about said post, both of which are, tbh, a bit contradictory. That’s why I’m venting mostly is just because I wonder if opening this up for discussion might help me reconcile my thoughts a bit.
Content Warning for Mentions of Fascist Ideologies, Anti-Blackness in fandom and Orientalism
I definitely agree with this! However, my two-cents on the whole “XYZ means you have XYZ (usually fascist) political view under the cut –
I still think what I said applies to Ward fans too.
Consider two people who identify as “Ward fans”. I’m going to call them Person A and Person B.
Person A is a fan of Grant Ward. They like how the character is a subversion of the “pretty bad boy with a heart of gold” stereotype and love the creepiness of how he was written and acted. They don’t condone Ward’s actions (though they might be a bit annoyed about that question if asked it since they get it a lot) or those of Hydra. They write Skyeward fic that is visceral and disturbing with content warnings applied to it. The fic itself certainly isn’t for everyone and reading it is similar to watching a psychological horror movie. They are a Grant Ward fan and a Skyeward shipper.
Person B is a fan of Grant Ward. They think the character is a pretty bad boy with a heart of gold. They condone Ward’s actions, ship Skyeward, and go out of their way to harass people who write anti-Skyeward posts. They don’t think Hydra was written to be a Nazi organization and like to say so to Jewish bloggers who haven’t already blocked them. They write schmoopy Skyeward fic (and may or may not tag). They are a Grant Ward fan and a Skyeward shipper.
Both these people are the same on paper: Grant Ward fans, Skyeward fans. They also might reblog similar fanart and fandom related in-jokes. For this reason, it might be kind of hard to tell them apart at first glace and I understand why someone else with different boundaries/needs than I have would want to stay the fuck away from both. But I, personally, feel safe around people like Person A while I don’t feel safe around people like Person B. That’s because there’s a difference in how they approach people who don’t like what they like and they aren’t downplaying/defending something that Jewish writers were writing as a stand-in for Nazis.
I have a few longtime mutuals like Person A (idk if they’re Ward fans
but they are fans of Rumlow and Kilgrave). I also know people who are
like Person B (message me if you think you don’t know who I’m talking
about and want to block). I just blacklist all the mutuals’ Hydra-related content, which is tagged and easy to do.
But someone who thinks that being a fan of something is enough to suss out of the political beliefs of that person will end up attacking both types of fan, and I think that’s unfortunate.
Off topic but Loki actually was racist toward humans but he was toward frost giants. He wanted to genocide all of them in the first Thor movie.
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