Sarah, I'd like to genuinely thank you for approaching these topics in the way you do. Fandom culture gets a lot of hate thats partially because were all collectivley cringing about our pasts but oftentimes is just rooted in misogyny and homophobia. Fandoms oftentimes had toxic elements (dont want to downplay that either) but most of my experiences with it were incredibly positive and fun even if its cringy to look back on now. So thank you for speaking about it as it was, and not having a snarky, cruel attitude about it like most do. Its helped me be kinder to myself and heped me not cringe at my past self, but instead remember it as the (mostly) fun and immersive experience it was, something that helped me keep going when i needed it most. Lots of love to you and Emily :)
I once heard from somewhere that if you have never been cringe (in like a harmless way) then you are very boring and therefore cringe. But seriously, I think cringy fandom stuff gets way more hate than it should. I was a part of the Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Sherlock fandoms when I was a teen and for a long time I was embarrassed about it. However, now that I'm in my late 20s, I've started to look back at those times in fondness as I had a lot of fun and it was great to be so unabashedly excited about something. I tried to avoid things that were "cringe" for a long time, but I've started allowing myself to enjoy such things again. Like recently I've gotten into Danganranpa, which I know is seen as peak cringe. But hey, I like murder mysteries and I like over the top dramatic stories, so I've allowed myself to have fun with it (although I usually don't get too far into the fandoms because I'm 27 and a lot of fandoms are made up of people around 16, and also I'm too old and tired to deal with fandom drama).
You expressed this so well! I love learning about fandom stuff since I'm not really in any but I don't love how many sources that talk about it don't approach the topics with kindness. Love this channel because Sarah obviously has experience in the culture herself, is self-aware and can show empathy to everyone involved.
Sarah is right, teen girls get a LOT of shit for things they like. Thanks to Sarah I've been checking myself when it comes to fandoms and teen girl related stuff because lord knows I was just as cringe as a teen boy than any teen girl.
You KNOW Sarah is a fandom veteran by how casually she explains Roxel by saying "A lot of the time it would be via MPreg." Not even the hint of a flinch; that's fandom cred, is what that is.
I sorta wish mpreg wasn't viewed through the lens of 'cringe' in 2022, speaking as a trans dude myself. Of course I prefer it when the guy getting pregnant in these scenarios is written to be explicitly trans, but like... the immediate revulsion and embarrassment at the CONCEPT of a man being pregnant is kinda hurtful. My uterus still works fine, far as I know.
honestly tad strange being just a regular guy is the funniest possible option that could have happened. bill cypher is really pressed about some dude who's just a guy.
In hindsight that's a hilarious joke made better because the fans were expecting the total opposite. It honestly sounds like a joke someone would make in the alternate universe where he is some magical square deity.
That is a hilarious take omg xD I never thought about it like that. Maybe Bill's so pressed because Tad Strange just never reacts to anything in any predictable way, therefore ruining his fun by taking it all in stride (although fanon Tad is still the cooler option imo)? As a note, my favourite part of GF fandom is when we all collectively ignored Alex Hirsch's idea for human Bill.
yeah I mean, chaos demon probably hates some guy who's just normal and boring, and in all honesty I fucking love canonical Tad Strange (and he loves bread)
I was just coming to say this lol. When you make the rhythm game that's supposed to be a fun celebration of the series music also a CANON PART OF THE STORY, numbers are meaningless...
I don't know what's so complicated about that to be completely honest. Sounds like just following the meme that KH is overly complex by any means possible. KH is plenty overly complex without reaching
My favorite piece of fanon is how the My Hero Academia Fandom collectively decided to make "au- mineta doesn't exist" a tag on ao3. They literally just write him out bc he sucks so bad lol
This is the best thing I have heard today lmao. When I read MHA, the only thing I truly, outright *disliked* was Mineta and couldn't understand why the author wrote him in. I support Mineta erasure
I seen y/n ones that says "reader-replaces-mineta" they decided that if they were going to self insert themselves they would do it with violence, and I applaud that.
@@MissPoplarLeaf Fun (but not really) Fact: the reason the author wrote him in it is because Mineta is his self-insert, according to the MHA hero database which has Horikoshi's A/Ns. Yes, the most hated character in the manga is, ironically, the character with the closest outlooks and personality of the author. Do with this info what you will.
My favorite piece of fanon ever formed is the idea that Draco Malfoy smells like green apples because he took a bite of a green apple one time in one of the movies. Absolutely amazing work everyone
Wow I forgot about that. That was a time. Also the Mauraders Fandom blossoming from a few random posts. A bunch of side characters turned to main ones, Dorcas, Marlene, Mary, Hestia, Benjy.... Flashbacks.
@@Emma.Lou1 the marauders/black family fandom literally confuses me so much because of this. i’ve been a fan of hp for YEARS and pride myself on knowing literally every single small detail and character, and all of a sudden i look at fanworks and they’re just casually mentioning some character that i’ve never heard of 😭
I’m really not a big fan of the character so I’m declaring myself unbiased. But wow I truly feel that particular smell fits him perfectly. Like that’s somehow spot on regardless of it originating as being a lil snack he ate in one of the movies. That’s insanely fitting for the characters whole vibes somehow.
the fandom was well and truly past its heyday when I tried to get into it, just on the knowledge that so many people had been so very into it, I supposed there must be something there. I did not realize that 90% of the high quality content was just the fandom itself. Made it a couple episodes deep and bailed
@@Romanticoutlawsame experience but I somehow lasted all the way to sesson 4 before realising how garbage everything actually was, and so I felt betrayed
@@Romanticoutlaw I went to check it out because my brother's first girlfriend was really into it and I was making an effort to bond with her, and I was definitely aware of the whole superwholock being a thing that dominated tumblr but I was a bit old for it (having spent most of my actual fandom days in the deviantart era making Harry Potter and Bleach fanart) but I legitimately could not believe that this series with a fandom comparable to this two ungodly long running shows had a grand total of 6 episodes at the time, it really was insane.
"Columbo's wife isn't real" how dare you. That man is so sweet and he loves his unnamed wife so much and you have the gall to claim he's making that all up. tyranny. lies and slander.
I remember writing a eulogy to my grandmother, whom I called Mormor, on deviantart back in the day and someone added it to their shipping folder and refused to remove it despite my asking. This is giving me way flashbacks to that, but at least I know WHY now. Thank you!
I never comment on TH-cam but I wanted to share a funny gay anecdote: pasiphile (of These Violent Delights fame) became a close friend when I was going through cancer treatment bc, while I was not into Mormor, there was a bit of a tumblr community for the small Western European country we both live in and we realised we lived in the same town, so they came to visit me in hospital quite often. I'm not going to share any info about them bc they're a v private person BUT back in 2014 one of their followers translated one of their fics to French, and pasiphile asked me to have a look bc I speak French and they didn't back then. I really liked the translation and messaged the translator to congratulate them. Fast forward a bit over seven years (incl. a first irl meeting in 2015 on a joint holiday with pasiphile, who's still one of our best friends!, three years of long distance and three years of living together) and said translator and I are engaged and will be becoming WIVES in july! So I was never a mormor fan (EDIT: I say, like a hypocrite, bc while I was mainly a johnlock fan I did v much write mormor fic bc all my friends + gf were into it) but the mormor fandom did get me a wife :p
"The male/male pairings take up a large portion of the fandom. It's...basically impossible to avoid." I like that I can drop this here and no one would guess which fandom is being referred to in advance.
I am fascinated by that phenomenon! I'm not even into men, and yet most of my pairings have been mxm. I think it might have to do something with how friendships between men are often a lot more developed in media? One is hardly gonna ship women who don't even pass the blechdel test. But I also find there is something interesting about the dynamic between two men, and I generally just prefer men to be into each other over me. I think for people into men gay porn is the obvious answer, and there are some problematic aspects there, but I think there's more layers to it because I know I'm drawn to it as well.
@@CanelaAguila That's a pretty good point actually. A lot of it could just be fetishizing mlm but it is true that men usually end up more fleshed out in stories. I mean I'm a bi man so I have some vested interest in it. But besides that what interests me is that kind of male dynamic of being scared of affection to other men in their friendships. So when two men are showing affection close to intimacy it feels strong. We expect them to be with a woman (which typically is with a female character highly undeveloped), but he has this male best friend with more depth put into his character with a very strong connection to each other. And as authors love to do, they've shoved some queerbaiting in there to top it off. It builds itself with so much potential of something I find myself seeking the conclusion to it in fandom. The porn is really well written too. (My biggest wlw ship is Bubblegum and Marceline and thinking about it, it's 100% because they are developed characters with a great dynamic.)
Guys, "people only ship men because all female characters are flat" is moot when said in the comments to a video which discusses a fandom around a ship, one part of which didn't even exist in canon, and the other had to be heavily rewritten to fit in. This even happens in fandoms around media with well developed and interesting female characters in sapphic relationshpis, because men are that more interesting to this specific demographic. Can't be helped.
This was the video that made me fully realize that Sarah is doing actual sociology/anthropology here, besides literary criticism, internet history and general humor. It's much-needed work, and I salute you for it.
Interesting to rewatch this video in the context of Tumblr's recent fascination with _Goncharov._ People are just making up entire plotlines, character arcs, and romances without having ever seen so much as a clip from the Scorsese original.
There is no original. It originated from a sneaker that, instead of having a knockoff brand logo, had the phrase, “Goncharov, written and directed by Martin Scorsese” on it. We saw this and ran with it as a meme, but there’s no original movie.
@@cosmicdust2668 sorry? Not sure what you mean by this. I took film studies in highschool and we watched it TWICE. Spent at least three weeks discussing it in class, too. I’m pretty sure it’s real :-/
I'm reminded of a fannon vs cannon thing that happened in the Good Omens fandom a few weeks ago. Someone DMed Neil Gaiman to say that they didn't like Aziraphalie's past relationship with Oscar Wilde, only for Gaiman to reply with confusion because neither he, nor did Sir Terry ever write such a thing. Someone jumped in pretty quick to clarify that that's a strictly FANNON theory that Aziraphale knew Oscar Wilde and to please not bother Mr Gaiman with it. This kind of thing happens rather a lot with the GO fandom, with Gaiman being on tumblr and people messaging him with fannon theories.
Honestly fannon and cannon have fused so thoroughly in that fandom that they might as well be one at this point, it’s one of my favourite things about it. Like, even in the book there are authors notes where they say that during writing entire passages would just “appear” in their words and neither terry nor Neil knew who wrote them, and isn’t that what fannon fusing with cannon is, in a sense?
I cannot stress enough how much credibility you earn by being one of the original fans and shippers of this character. I would not want to hear about this from anyone who wasn’t there in the trenches. The voice of the people
Wild how people say that Moran's character is so complex you can't really definitively call him the "bad guy" when in the one story he was in he killed a man because he beat him at a card game
@@sarar4901 OMG that would be too frickin' cute!!! And for nickname variations, not only is gender-neutral Sam there, but Samily could be "Sam ily" as in "Sam I love you" ♥️🥰 And _also_ that could be abbreviated in, like, texts or contact names or whatever as *Sam♥️* 🤩
as a gay man who has been familiar with moffat's work from a young age, this fandom has always fascinated me... mostly because i've been keenly aware for years that moffat would never write a character for me intentionally. he's *always* been a misogynist, a homophobe, and ultimately a dullard who writes the same jokes over and over again. i really hope all of this kept him up at night, lmao
It's why I was always stymied when people INSISTED that he was really writing Johlock. I was, and am, fine with them liking it, wanting it, but was less fine when being shouted down for pointing out it would never actually happen because Moffat was, and is, teh suck. People were so wrapped up in their head-canon, they were giving passes to the crap work he was actually creating.
@@fuckmylifewtf reminds me of a tiktok someone showed me: "Author's note, these characters copyright ME! This fic should be seen as a direct threat, I am seizing the characters in a violent coup."
Tad Strange is low-key one of the funniest bits of fanon ever. Alex absolutely knew fans would take the "square" bait and run wild with it. It was a brilliant and harmless gag at the expense of the fanbase and I love it.
I was there when this happened and I watched the meltdown over the purple square boy being made non-canon, and the subsequent theorizing that the canon Tad wasn't his true form was *hilarious.*
@@trav1247 wait that’s the correct pronunciation? I assumed they were just reading it spelt with a j and didn’t know how to say it since they aren’t a fan.
Additionally, since the Sherlock Holmes books take place at about the time they were written, Moran almost certainly went on the Oxford-to-military-officer pipeline out of sheer familial trajectory alone. Honestly, the fact that he’s depicted in the books as sincerely dangerous and not merely some foppish dandy is exceptional.
@@roachno.24 There's a prestige to oxford but a lot of wealthier people (particularly eaton boys) get in via nepotism, not merit. The perfect example of this is the fact that Boris Johnson went to both and is the bumblingest idiot there is.
@@roachno.24 they are pretty much full of posh toffs who only got there through privilege and wealth. Most of our ruling class in the UK went to these schools and look at the callous, pathetic, cruel, greedy morons now. Though I'm sure you'll get a different answer from someone more right wing than me.
@@roachno.24 to make a long story very short: yes it's prestigious but in the way that comes with nepotism and more than a fair amount of classism attached to it. kinda like that scandal in the US about harvard or yale or some such letting in rich kids just because they're rich as for eton, as someone else here pointed out, it's basically shorthand for being a bumbling idiot from a wealthy background for lol
I think a my favorite part was when Emily possessed Sarah's body and mind and spoke through her in her own voice. That was so epic of her and she should do that more often
This reminds me a lot of the “Young Marauders” fandom within Harry Potter, specifically that a lot of people agree that a young Remus Lupin would be played by Andrew Garfield.
Yes! I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan, but I am a huge Andrew Garfield fan and I would always see people commenting about Remus Lupin on videos of him and I had no clue why😭
I'm truly surprised Sarah didn't cover this! I feel like the Marauders fandom has come up with a TON of fannon that has become really ingrained in people's view of the whole HP universe.
Fannon and Sherlock is so interesting because there was so little actual cannon content for years of the show’s peak fandom. The hiatus created so much more lore and content that the actual show never could live up to (and didn’t come close).
@@treeconsider9382 Eeehhhh, some of it did, just cause there were so many people involved that's bound to happen. But in the whole yeah it was way more entertaining
yup yup yup all the fan content was why I remained in the sherlock fandom for a few years and loved it so much. the show itself was just some tiny little seed but the fandom was like... hey let's make an amazing garden from this thing lol
@@Gloomdrake the seasonal rot in Sherlock was just insane. The first two seasons are incredibly strong must-watch stuff (one episode in season 1 isn’t amazing but still overall very good). A great cast, great production design, quite clever and witty scripts (if a bit obnoxious). But that’s only six episodes and obviously people wanted more. Unfortunately after such a long gap before season 3 and a plot twist at the end of two that was impossible to explain well enough, season 3 massively disappointed with its convoluted ideas and a tone more interested in being clever than actually spending much time at all on fun mysteries that the audience could get invested in. I thought the second episode was good, but the first and third were just barely coherent. Then there was a Christmas special that ended up functionally being a dream with some nice production design and then season 4 was by this time totally incoherent and basically borderline nonsense. The writers were too obsessed with seeming clever that they forgot to BE clever and write something interesting for any other reason than shock value. Season 4 repeatedly dropped several strange revelations that the audience could never have guessed and Sherlock could never have worked out. Not because they were good twists, that slipped past the less observant viewer, but because they were random twists that didn’t add anything. It no longer felt like a clever show at the top of its game extolling the fun of solving mysteries by deductions beyond the minds of many (but not impossible), it had the weird vibe of a desperate show throwing sudden surprises at you in the hope that you don’t notice that none of it means much. For such a limited series, it declined so quickly and for no apparent reason. Perhaps they didn’t want to be formulaic, but I think it’d be very uncharitable of someone to argue that the show was formulaic after just six (good) episodes. Arguably, it only became overly familiar in the later seasons, when the writers had apparently run out of sensible ideas (which is a curious concept, if true, given the material obviously remaining in the various books they hadn’t adapted). Sorry rant over. It’s just dispiriting really. I really would recommend series 1 and 2 though, they’re very good and then I’d use series 3 episode 2 as an alternative finale (though that might just be a personal preference).
Sarah is honestly one of the only youtubers who can be like “here’s a 75 minute long video essay where I only spend about 20 minutes talking about the thing referenced in the title” and I’ll watch every single second of it.
The phrase "Sarah Z and Lady Emily" brings to mind a comic series about two time travellers, one from the future and one from the Victorian era- skipping around through time and solving Fandom mysteries- and I wish I could draw now
"The writers ignored the fact that he died in the show and brought him back no questions asked" I mean, considering how they treated his and Sherlock's deaths in the show I think it's fair
I’ve never in my life been a kingdom heartie and I never knew why roxas was named roxas so hearing “he’s named roxas because it’s an anagram of sora but with an x in the middle” took me out so hard I gained ragdoll physics
@@AgentSteffi Spoilers for later games, also I'm simplifying things a bit so some details are left out: The ultimate goal of the the main villain, Xehanort, is to create something called a χ-blade (pronounced 'key-blade' using the Greek letter χ/chi) which is apparently a literal key to Kingdom Hearts that can be formed by a clash between pure Light and pure Darkness. The prequel _Birth By Sleep_ was his first attempt to do so: he tore the darkness out of his student Ventus's heart, creating a sentient psuedo-Heartless named Vanitas, then sent Ventus away to master the Keyblade; When Ventus got strong enough, he would fight/reunite with Vanitas, and the clash would produce the χ-blade with Vanitas in control. This actually worked, but a combination of Ventus fighting from the inside and his friend Aqua fighting Vanitas led to the χ-blade getting shattered and Ventus going comatose. Organization XIII, as it turns out, was part of Xehanort's second attempt at making the χ-blade. The Organization's leader, Xemnas, was actually Xehanort's Nobody (formed when Xehanort *willingly* gave his heart to the darkness) and his ultimate goal was to use Kingdom Hearts to corrupt the other members into more Xehanorts, in order to gather thirteen pure Darknesses for the χ-blade. That's why all the Organization members have 'X' in their name; they've been marked as vessels for Xehanort's Darkness for the χ-blade plan.
As someone who missed most of the Sherlock fandom and is currently studying Norwegian, I cannot describe how disorienting it was to see romantic fanart below the word "GRANDMA". I had no idea what planet I was on for a second there.
I love that Sarah z has managed to make an entire successful TH-cam channel out of reminding everyone of a certain age of the cringy shit we did in our teens and letting us reminisce on it
As a non native english speaker who watched Sherlock as a teen and interacted with english-speaking fandom spaces when I didn't speak or understand the language very well (and therefore I lost much subtext and context to what was being posted and written), I am ASTOUNDED to discover now, that I am an adult, after all this time, that Moran was never in the show. I swear to you I thought until this very moment he was in the show but somehow I'd forgot about him, because of how the fandom spoke and wrote of him!! this is so funny
ok but based on this description of moran from the books, he would have been a good final villain (would have explained all the weird moriarty stock footage) - could have had him vs watson while sherlock was somehow incapacitated, would have been cool always remember they could have done something exciting and cool and they chose to make the dog a small pirate child
You had 69 likes on this comment when I read it I'm sorry I had to like it myself and ruin that cause small pirate child made me choke and scare my cat
Honestly don't know why they went with "Sherlock has an insane, evil genius sister that no one knows about," rather than just following the books where Moran is the last member of Moriarty's criminal organisation left standing.
One of my favorite examples of fanon is Link from the legend of Zelda is sometimes written as mute and signs to communicate. No questions asked and lives peacefully with the the other interpretation of Link who is not mute but both characters are still written with the same personality according to their game's canon.
It's also pretty inline with why Link doesn't speak in the first place. It's mostly to let fans be in the shoes of link and if those shoes are filled with people who like him as mute then there's nothing stopping it
Tad Strange’s appearance actually made things more creative, since someone who’s a fan of both the show and podcast made connections between Gravity Falls and Night Vale. Example: Tad likes bread, bread is banned in Night Vale. One thing led to another, Tad was originally from Night Vale and moved to Gravity Falls.
I'd like to imagine he wanted to walk on the wild side and realised he'd only ever get his wheat/wheat by-product/bread fix by leaving. So, packing up and moving to Gravity Falls it was!
might i add that part of the harry potter fandom took harry’s dad and his friends + a bunch of characters mentioned once and turned it into a whole fandom with hundreds of fan fiction for itself as a stand alone thing. there’s collective agreed upon personality traits, clothing choices, fancasts, ships ect.. for each character. it’s like a whole nother story it’s pretty amazing and some fans who like it don’t even accosiate with the main series
I was waiting for a marauders mention, I got into the fandom solely because of how wild it was to me that an entire fandom was basically made from nothing
I never read/watched "Harry Potter" but I was the right age so I friends who were writing Marauders fanfic back in the mid-aughts and for twenty years, until I scrolled through the comments of this video, I fully assumed there was a prequel novel (or even series) starring the parents and their friends. They were only mentioned?! That's amazing.
I kinda like how the fandom took a underused Sherlock Holmes character and created a new version of him. Since Sherlock is in the public domain, that kinda makes this Sebastian Moran just as canon as any of the other BBC Sherlock characters
Yeah, pretty much. As someone who keeps up with seasonal anime I'll sometimes see japanese anime adaptations of the Sherlock setting such as Kabukicho Sherlock and Yuukoku no Moriarty that put their own new spin on it and in practice it comes down to the same thing.
As a trans woman, I understand people's hesitance to have cis influencers speak for us - in our stead. But there are already plenty of trans voices speaking out, and I, for one, am always glad to see cis allies who have done research and also speak out about good/bad representation. With or without co-writer Emily, I'd still be glad you've spoken about these issues in a sensitive and empathetic way.
I find ideas like "allies should sit down and shut up and let minorities have the mic" get interpreted in a weird and unhelpful way, particularly by allies and antagonists. People act like it literally means "if this subject matter doesn't effect you personally in your day to day life, then you don't get to make any sort of commentary on it at all" which is,,,, like the opposite of helpful. Don't get me wrong, people who are TOTALLY uneducated on a subject shouldn't get to have the final word on it [a popular example being that cis men shouldnt get to make life changing legal decisions about women's bodies bc they often times have literally no concept of femme/AFAB/women experiences, therefore they make TERRIBLE decisions bc they know nothing! everyone can agree on that.] but if we apply this idea to every situation regardless of the context, then we're asking allies to literally do nothing, to ignore the very people theyre supposed to be allying with. I have a straight friend who likes to ask alot of questions about my asexuality and gender expression, which is great! she wants to try and understand my perspective as best as she can, not only because she is my friend who cares about me, but also so she can step in and educate someone else who might be asking when she's given the opportunity. I was really touched when she first started doing this, bc I wasn't expecting it at all, and she said "isn't this the literal point of being an ally? it's not your job to go around explaining and defending your existence to everyone who asks about it, so why not take some of the burden off of your shoulders, especially when the topic comes up and you aren't here to explain it." and I had never thought of that before. She always tries to use my own words and clarifies that she can only explain so much before referring people to a more direct source of information [I.E. an actual asexual person] and I feel like that is the standard we should REALLY be holding people to. my point being, i have no problem with (and honestly encourage) people of privilege with influential platforms being confident enough to say "since i dont have this lived experience, here are the words of someone who does and you should listen to them" and i just...as long as the facts are correct and the opinions are coming from a well intentioned, credible, and meaningful source, i don't get why we so often brush people off. honestly, it's very dismissive, and i've only seen it used in dismissive ways by people who don't want their views to be challenged, and that shit is so frustrating. like what more do you want? not every single member of a marginalized group wants to spend all their time and energy educating people about their experiences, and they shouldn't have to do that to have their experiences validated and discussed in media.
@@TheRaychenator I agree so much. It's honestly relaxing when a cis person with a platform speaks up for trans people (if they know what they are talking about). Makes me feel like I can trust the community around them a bit more too, knowing their fans should at least somewhat understand me. A space where I don't have to explain myself. It's also really validating. I know I shouldn't care about cis people's approval but fuck does it come with a breath of fresh air when it happens.
@@karkatvantass3730 yes! im fortunate enough that i dont have to actively participate in super heteronormative spaces every single day, so when i DO have to participate in those spaces it can be jarring and isolating immediately and having literally anyone in those spaces just be like "yeah i know what queer terms mean, you dont have to explain them to me" or even as little as "yeah i know someone who i trans and i love them" is such a relief. its the bare minimum and im grateful but exhausted LOL
@@ichorlight you're totally valid in feeling that way and if emily was a cis man saying this shit, i would absolutely feel apprehension. It's not unreasonable to express that you instinctually have a hard time trusting a group of people who have systemic power over you. As someone who is obviously super white, i am totally not offended when a person of color seems not to trust me right away, so in the same way i don't knock you for being mistrustful of cis people in trans spaces. i just think its counterproductive to actively antagonize and slander our genuine allies, which is what it seems like people seem to do to Emily.
@@TheRaychenator God man it feels a bit embarrassing sometimes to want that validation, and it really is the bare minimum, but I barely see it. Just the little moments of a hetero space accepting me and not bothering the shit out of me over it feels fucking fantastic. The other day I was accidentally outed at work (I won't bother explaining). The manager that heard immediately went "Do you go by other pronouns?" I said yeah but I'm not out yet and she just told me to let her know if I wanted to start going by different pronouns. It was such a small and short interaction, but it meant a lot to me.
27:08 "Fans agreeing on a specific middle or last name for a character who never canonically got one." I know you're not talking about Anthony "Janthony" Crowley but it's what I thought of immediately, to my shame.
Does anyone know any other characters where this happened? Because I want a Holy Trinity comprised of them, Anthony Janthony Crowley and Martin Kartin Blackwood.
"Well, 2022 so far has been a wash - but on the plus side: I never have to hear about or learn anything new about BBC's Sherlock ever again for the rest of my life." *sees the new Sarah Z video has dropped* "Welp. Time to partake in that good ol' fashioned Sherlock bone hurting juice."
oh man bone hurting juice is a phrase i have not heard since... actually since fandom was still watching sherlock unironically i think. thank you for bringing it back into my life
@@jupitermelichios392 quick question for the purpose of internet etymology: what year would you guess that was in? i don’t remember seeing it on tumblr that much but i have a bad memory, so im not super aware of the phrase. but i just checked Know Your Meme, which said the origin was in 2016. I was graduating high school in 2016, and i was most involved with Sherlock fandom tumblr at least 3 years before then. If you remember seeing it before 2016, someone needs to update the Know Your Meme page. Tbh I feel like they RARELY credit tumblr, so that makes sense
I went into this year optimistic but we've already got violent protesters and a war. The 20s keeps being rough, I suppose we're getting some good stuff to numb the pain at least.
I will always remember the pre-movie release Frozen fandom naming Hans’ horse Lemon. No clue who started it, we all just called him that. Eventually, Jennifer Lee gave Hans’ horse a canon name: Sitron, which is Norwegian for Lemon. 🥰
Reminds me of when the Pokémon fandom used to call Ghetsis „Dennis“ pre-release because his battle theme was leaked and fans thought the voice chanting his name sounded like „Dennis“. Good times.
I’m in a fandom where an unnamed guard who say sa few things in passing with the fandom’s MC somehow ended up with the fan name Ben Castiel and has a fanbase of his own that the company, IGG, acknowledges now. No one knows how it started or who first called him that. It’s just…always been.
My biggest experience with this was in the Detroit: Become Human fandom, where one of the endings involves one of the main android characters being replaced with a blue-eyed, more advanced, 'perfect' version of himself. He appears for a one-minute scene, says nothing, does nothing, and isn't even part of the more popular Good Ending. And then someone said 'What if we shipped him with this other cop character who appears in, like, three or four scenes, and his only canon character trait is being an android-hating a-hole that likes coffee?' Boom, Reed900. It's honestly one of my favorite things about fandom, taking insignificant scraps and turning them into something that a big segment of people care about, to the point that it's just a normal part of fandom life that the creators never would've guessed would catch on. (Also, 'NaruMitsu is canon' made me very happy.)
Also Gavin Reed being trans was a VERY popular headcanon in a lot of fics for, from what I can tell, exactly 0 canon reasons (not that you need a canon reason for a trans headcanon, obvs, and I'm always up for one, but it's interesting how pervasive it was when his main character trait is being a jerk) Similar situation in the Pathologic fandom (a game about doctors in a Russian steppe town infested by the plague, which you would think wouldn't have much of a fandom, let alone fanfic & fanon) where 80% of the fanbase decided Daniil is trans, but at least these are playable characters lol
I scrolled through these comments just waiting for someone to mention Gavin or Nines. It was genuinely a bit jarring to find out that there’s never a single canon mention of him having a cat, or being trans
OH I thought this was gonna be like My Little Pony and how everybody collectively made up personalities for every background pony, but its instead like if they got a MLP chararacter from the earlier shows and pretended they were a main character
The most egregious example is when they all renamed Time Twister into Dr. Hooves, despite not being a doctor at all. "But _the_ Doctor is not _a_ doctor, he's just the place the word 'doctor' comes from (or something... I don't watch that show)." Yeah, well in any case they eventually found some stupid reason to give him THE SCARF™ in the actual show, just because fans couldn't be comprehend the fact that someone with an hourglass cutiemark _wouldn't_ be an actual time traveler.
My favourite Twin Peaks theory was that the end of The Return makes sense if you watched the last 2 episodes at the same time. A thing I absolutely did
Awww the only response to We're in Hell is from a pr0nbot ☹ That's so sad. Yeah, I did the side-by-side too... honestly I didn't get much from it. "Sense-making" isn't what I'm looking for from Lynch, at least not in a linear sense. But even though it might be (probably is lol) coincidental, it definitely does hit the same beats. I didn't get much from it, but it was an interesting experience.
It makes a *kind* of sense. Was it designed to be watched that way? I don't think so, Lynch has always resisted attempts to explain his work. But, you know - authorial intent doesn't = "meaning." Give it a shot. If you like it, if it gives the show resonance for you, it's worth doing.
my toxic trait is completely believing seb was just offscreen for all of sherlock. you cant prove that he Wasn't the sniper trained on john at the pool
Back when I was into Harry Potter, around 2008-2013, I almost exclusively read fics about the Marauders. And there was so much fanon content, that would repeat itself in almost every fic and piece of fanart, taht I just thought it was actual canon. When I reread the books later and realized most of what I thought I knew about the Marauders was from fanfiction, I was honestly shocked. So much of it was so consistent in the fandom.
Mauraders fanon was hugely influenced by The Shoebox Project. I can't say how much of it was original to The Shoebox Project or whether that one work just popularized a lot of it, but it was an astonishingly unifying work in the mid-aughts--well before the existence of Ao3.
the marauders have had a massive resurgence thanks to tiktok and the fic all the young dudes, it’s funny to see the same fan casts as in 2014 even though the actors are now 30-35
@@missybarbour6885 It was a multimedia fanfic project that used (or at least started out with) the framing device of a shoebox full of school memorabilia kept under Remus Lupin's bed. There were two authors who did the epistolary portions of the fic--one who wrote as Remus and one who wrote as Sirius. Other bits are written as traditional fic chapters that accompany and contextualize fanart "photographs." You can still find it in .pdf form by searching it, and I think at this point it has also been uploaded to Ao3
@@mastelsa Interesting! I can't believe I never ran across that on tumblr in 2014. I always think I was super deep into a fandom until I find somebody else chilling at the bottom of the Marianas Trench
another tiny example of collectively agreed upon fanon being quietly slipped into the canon of a franchise is the name for shiny Pokemon! They were originally called "differently-colored-pokemon" iirc (or something similar) with the name shiny only being used in official games starting in Gen 5. Until then, the word "shiny" had been a label applied only by fans--it just got so popular that it was made official!
Werent they called "chromatic pokemon" ? Maybe thats just the french translation, but thats always what they were called on the official wiki i used to browse 🤔
15:07 i love how different the Canadian perspective on Eton and Oxford is from the English perspective: in England if you go to Eton you’re basically automatically categorised as a ‘bumbling idiot’ - just a very rich one
God this reminds me of the Irene Adler me and my friend fanoned prior to Season 2. She was a model from New Jersey who was very pretty and acted very dumb on purpose, which made it easier for her to manipulate Sherlock. In the story my friend and I wrote, John and Sherlock get contacted by an American senator who wants them to get photos that Irene took of her and the senator during a brief fling they had, which the senator thinks will be used to blackmail him. It turns out that Irene didn’t know the senator at all, and that the photos are actually of her and ANOTHER politician, a kind former boyfriend of Irene’s, who the senator is planning on blackmailing once Sherlock gets the photos for him. Sherlock gives the senator the photos anyway, but it turns out they have an embedded virus that Irene programmed that exposes the senator’s various blackmailing schemes as soon as he publishes the photos. Sherlock admires that Irene was able to trick him and John tries to convince her to join them in solving crimes, but instead she marries her nice politician ex and moves to Washington DC to be a trophy wife who actually is the politically smart one in the marriage (since her husband is a bit of a himbo). It was super silly and CLEARLY written by two fifteen year old girls, but honestly I think it was more faithful to the spirit of the original A Scandal in Bohemia story than the show ended up being. Edit: WOW this got way more of a response than I expected!! Thanks so much for your kind words everyone! We never published it, but the story was called A Scandal in Leonia (which is the name of a township in New Jersey, i thought it was super clever lmao) and the faceclaim for Irene was Paris Hilton.
My favorite 'fanon took it and did crazy stuff' story is the magnus archives- which is odd, because the fanon is pretty close to the show, and all the canon ships are really popular- except one. Peter/ Elias is insanely popular and terribly funny. They are two of the main villians. They are each others only real friends. In fanon they are at least 6 times divorced/ remarried, and absolutely horrible for each other. It's so much fun.
Its great because it would contradict so much of the actual plot, yet the dynamic is apparently 100% intentional, and the marry/divorce meme was started by Peters actor
Ngl I've never seen a more unified fanon than TMA's fanon, especially regarding the appearances of the characters (and also the _entire_ fandom's stubborn refusal to spell Jon as "John" even though that's technically the canon spelling lmao)
oh man yeah i was SO ready to hear this topic specifically around podcasts - even tho sarah and emily didnt end up saying anything about im glad this example in particular is down here LOL
@@aw7145 when sarah started talking about the cas vs cass thing in the supernatural fandom my mind instantly went to the tma fandom's refusal to spell jon's name as john, no matter what rusty quill has to say on the matter
I will say there are two big examples of fanon I see in the tma fandom that often supercede canon there, that being daisy and basira not actually being a romantic couple and the fact that a lot of the main cast is often headcanoned as poc. While it's a really great thing that fandom is becoming more inclusive and open to headcanoned appearances that aren't skinny white people, but it also sort of hides the fact that well, the magnus archives source media DOES have issues with it's poc representation. The only main cast member who is canonically a POC is Basira, who is also a cop who's story is used to explore police brutality, and while there are a few nods to her facing discrimination in the workplace, the fact that she's a poc contributing to police brutality when irl it's often poc facing that violence isn't really touched upon or a big part of her arc, which is where you can really tell this was written by a white writer. All other canon poc characters are villains like Jude Perry and Manuela Dominguez. But it doesn't really get talked about in favor of discussing the queer rep in the podcast.
i first encountered the whole "fandoms turn on people who don't adhere to fanon" thing with welcome to night vale and fanart of cecil. i honestly didn't realize people were serious about him looking like his voice actor (or about him being a blond white guy in general) until artists i liked started getting harassed over their art of him as a person of color. it's bizarre to me that people could get so wrapped-up in their own ideas of media that they would violently reject any deviation from them. like i'd seen plenty of stuff i didn't like that was popular fanon, but mostly i just found it annoying and ignored it. but people just take this stuff personally in a way that i'd never seen before in fandom spaces. i wonder if part of it has something to do with how we're encouraged as fans/consumers to treat liking a certain piece of media as a defining character trait. brands want us to make "star wars fan" a part of our identity instead of just a common interest, you know? and it's easy to see how people contradicting something someone deeply identifies with could lead to lashing out, which then gets wildly magnified because internet, and suddenly people are getting death threats because they prefer to think of a character as a black woman instead of a white man or some shit like that.
i have nothing against poc cecil myself but i think part of it might have been the whole thing about how dylan marron was specifically cast to read carlos because the producers didn't feel comfortable having a white man read for a queer latino character - people probably assumed that attitude carried over to cecil, if they didn't dislike it for "but skinny white man uwu" reasons or whatever
Remember console wars back in the early 2000s? You are absolutely right. Any attack on something that we like is an attack on the one (and everyone) who likes the thing in question. Because when we are young what we like becomes a part of us. It’s crazy how fiction and hobbies become an extension of our personal. It’s almost kind of creepy how self conscious we are if something we like is perceived as wrong, bad or not as good as other concepts. Like where does this sense come from? Any psyche majors out there to explain this phenomenon?
Man, thank God I never drew my interpretation of Cecil because he 100% looks like an Eldritch entity in my head lmao It sucks that that artist was harassed for drawing a character that doesn't even have a canonical appearance. The point of WTNV is that he's just... a voice. His description is vague on purpouse
41:13 - never forget: when Capcom collaborated with Material Crown to make Ace Attorney themed jewelry, they literally MADE A PAIR OF RINGS FOR THESE TWO. you speak the absolute truth
It's important to remember in Japan, young women are seen as a highly desirable demographic and appealing to them and their interests is 100% a thing. Capcom made Sengoku Basara (Samurai Kings in English) as a fighting game in '05. The assumption was, that guys were going to play it. Instead they found out the people buying it were women, who were pairing off all the male characters. Capcom went with it and made a lot more games, anime and stage shows. (And like Ace Attorney it got a Takarazuka Musical.) I'm truly not surprised to hear about themed jewelry for Ace Attorney. I use to have the Edgeworth official tea cup and saucer, but the saucer broke in a move.
i mean the ace attorney development team literally researched and read a bunch of BL manga to build their relationship after seeing how many people shipped them
@@rachelk7784 It's interesting because the demographic is treated no more or less seriously in Japan than any other with the combination of easy-to-meet standards and ample disposable income, but it comes across and bizarre pandering to the West, simply because it's a fandom of young girls and teens that is taken on their own merits instead of being regarding as the Official Punching Bag of all other media subcultures.
I'm going to be real, I read that fic bc of this video, and had 0 idea about Mormor while and prior to reading it, plus I'd only seen like 3 episodes of Sherlock and hated it and jesus christ, it IS really fucking good
As someone steeped in The SCP Foundation, aka “Fanon/Creative Writing Community spawned from a 4chan creepypasta,” it’s super interesting to see how similar things form from more mainstream media properties. Thanks for the video!
God yes, I was into Creepypasta for awhile so the whole fanon thing is second nature to me. So to see it talked about in relation to a legit show is so fascinating to me! Especially with a whole made up character since that's basically what all the Creepypasta characters are.
NGL, I thought the title card said ‘Mormon and Fandom’ and thought it was going to be a deep dive into Christian fandoms, with a focus on Mormons in particular
I finished watching this hours ago and I only just realized... you posted this on Lunar New Year... the year of the TIGER. Well played, Ms. Z, well played. **slow claps in astonishment**
You mentioned it yourself, but given that mormor means grandma in my language, I could never get into this ship. Imagine reblogging nsfw fanart and tagging it “grandma” lol
Nobody oppresses and tramples over people more than an idiot with a soapbox to stand on. People will look for whatever excuse they can to be awful while patting themselves on the back for how self-righteous they are, instead of actually putting thought and effort into being better people that actually care about others.
@@Xeronoia Have you ever tried to be a better person that actually cares about others? 'cuz I haven't and I want to know what it's like. ngl, sounds difficult :P
@@BeepSmile It's easier than it sounds. For instance, when you're trying to be considerate - make sure you're not stuck in your own head about it. A lot of parents make this mistake for example, trying to do something nice/considereate/etc but end up inconveniencing their kid. And a lot of them get defensive about it too when it doesnt go how they pictured it, instead of acknowledging that they made a mistake and to try and remember to *actually* be considerate in the future. When it comes to things like that, your intentions don't matter - only the results of your actions/behavior and how they're received by the other person matter. (That said, sometimes someone else - the kid in the case of this example - is just being an unreasonable asshole. What can be difficult is determining when you're wrong or when they are, and an important part of that is always engaging in self-reflection.) As for bigger world things, a lot of it boils down to not being bandwagony, don't spread hateful bullshit, focus on tangible effects you can have on things instead of virtue signaling or lipservice. As another example, buying a Tesla is worse for the environment than normal cars are due to how Tesla cars are produced causing a lot of severe environmental damage. So, if you actually care about the environment, do NOT buy a Tesla and instead do something else. Like get a hybrid car, as one alternative.
17:26 when Nico bought (stole?) a Happy Meal THAT HE DIDN'T EVEN EAT to just throw it in a hole in the ground and everyone just decided Happy Meals are a necessary background object in almost every single fanart of him, my boy can't escape the woobifying
As someone who wrote well-known MorMor fanfiction in not one, but multiple languages, something that greatly fascinates me is that while the English-speaking fandom eventually died out, the much smaller German and Russian communities continue to persist as part of the Sherlock fandom to this day. This definitely plays it's part in the way fandom culturally exists online.
a lot of fandoms actually persists in other languages even if they're smaller. i think most of it is due to the fact that what is "discovered" or the trends in the English fandom take longer to get to the other languages
@@ha_des in Latin America, AKA where the hype for AF was strongest, instead of super saiyan it was translated into "Super Saiyajin" because saiyan sounds weird in Spanish
My first exposure to Chihiro gender discourse was seeing someone's tumblr dni saying "dni if you use he/him for Chihiro" and being very confused about why people were headcanoning Chihiro from Spirited Away as transmasc. Honestly wish I hadn't figured out who they were talking about, I got so excited for canon trans girl Chihiro only for that to not be the case 💀
I found this comment on a rewatch and still didn't remember there was a Chihiro other than the one from Spirited Away lol (Sidenote: my phone tried to correct 'Chihiro' to 'chirp' and I think that's funny)
@@naikigutierrez4279 chihiro from danganronpa has a funky plot line that makes it pretty likely that it’s him Because he pretends to be a girl because people bullied him for being weak It wasn’t really handled well in canon. Honestly I think trans man chihiro makes more sense than trans woman chihiro in danganronpa. That’s just me though.
This reminds me of my time in the Detroit: Become Human fandom. We were given like 2 non-verbal seconds of a character (RK900) and before long we had pretty much collectively decided on his personality and there were TONS of fics shipping him with various characters (Reed900 for life). This character didn't even exist in some playthroughs of the game if memory serves, like you had to get certain endings to even discover that he was a thing. And then all he did was stare. For literally 2 seconds. And said nothing. What was especially funny to me is that everyone ran with the idea of him being taller than the main character, Connor, even though they were very nearly the same model of android and there was zero height difference. Ahhh, I miss that fandom.
LMAO this ship is now one of the most prevalent parts of the whole fandom, the characters of RK900 and Gavin Reed are now fully fleshed characters with high quality fan-films about them. it truly is a strange phenomenon lol
@@elynotarobot3813 YEAH HAHAH I haven’t watched the big fan movie made about them yet but I want to 😂 my RK900 fic in AO3 is still my most popular fic on my whole account, I love it
this was in my brain the entire video!! it really says a lot that the entirely made up pairing Reed900 is the second most popular ship in my bookmarks (but who doesn't love two assholes joining together to find love?)
Fun fact: 'Macavity' from 'Cats' is clearly referencing Moriarty. He's the criminal mastermind and the description of him in the poem and song fits with Moriarty's description in the story.
They both are also referred to as "the Napoleon of Crime", iirc. There were zero attempts at subtlety. Macavity is Moriarty's fursona and nobody can convince me otherwise.
In a roundabout way, this makes me wonder about the existence of Les Mis in the Sherlock universe. Cats obviously could not exist in the same form, because Macavity is a blatant reference to Moriarty. If Cats didn't exist at all, would Cameron Mackintosh have still had the success and clout to produce Les Mis 4 years later? Obviously it _does_ exist in the Sherlock universe, Mycroft evidently pissed off the front of house staff by being on his phone in the auditorium, but _should_ it exist?
@@Seal0626 I'm not sure whether Cats would exist in the Sherlock universe. In the Sherlock universe, T.S. Elliot would not have had Doyle's canon to base his Macavity upon, as Sherlock Holmes would not have existed that early. There might be a collection of poems about cats, but the poem about Macavity would not be a reference to Moriarty. Thus, Cats would be a different musical if it existed. It might have been turned into a movie or not. Les Mis is not bound to the existences of Doyle's stories, so as long as Victor Hugo existed, Les Mis can have been written that way and can have become both a musical and a movie as in our reality.
One thing that I love about your content is, that you still celebrate beeing invested in these Storys and fandoms. Often beeing a fangirl or shipper or consuming fanfiction and loving it is rediculed or labled as cringe. I don't have the words for this but it means a lot to seeing someone embrace their teen obsessions instead of condemning them.
This whole thing reminds me of that time the Danny Phantom fandom took a background character that was on screen for maybe 2 seconds and gave him a name, a backstory, a personality, a role in the narrative, dynamics with the main characters, 2 brothers, a dad, etc. He ended up being characterized as something of a conspiracy theorist who was the only person in Amity Park that understood that Danny was Phantom, but no one believed him, so he develops this mostly one-sided hatred for Danny as he tries to prove somehow that Danny and Phantom are the same person. It wasn't for shipping purposes, people were just having fun making a more compelling antagonist than Butch Hartman could ever write. We stan Wes Weston
I don’t know how best to describe it at the moment, but I must say that you are the uncontested QUEEN of this strange sort of fandom anthropology, and that I hope that it gives you as much joy to create as it gives me to listen to.
It’s videos like this, specifically describing how they decided everything about this character, that just makes me so happy that fandom culture is a thing. It’s rare, very very rare.
Religion and Fanbases work essentially the same way in their core after all, religion is just a more serious larger scale form of fanbase in many ways.
I would go further and postulate that the internal episode premise is directly "how religions form" and then they decided to tell that story through a lens they have experience with.
love sarah's delivery of the entire dbz fandom bit, you could tell there was no gears turning behind the eyes, she was reading off the script in her mind and had no prior knowledge to inform it. absolutely amazing 10/10
the sherlock fandom creating a character honestly reminds me of the Marauders fandom (of Harry Potter, like Sirius and all that), I'm not part of it but there's this really big fanfic they all love-All The Young Dudes- and I swear they have all created at least like four new characters and collectively they have all decided they just exist. It's kind of cool because quite a few of them are like POC and LGBTQ+ but it's just so strange as it's just fanmade.
I watched a marauders cosplay livestream once and a lot of the comments asked sirius "do you know Grant Chapman?" (One of the main OCs from all the young dudes) and it felt really weird because Grant is literally just from this one fic. Not all fanworks have to be set in the same universe. It was a *marauders* cosplay livestream, not an *all the young dudes* cosplay livestream. I personally like all the young dudes as a standalone story, but I don't worship it as universal marauders canon.
this is exactly what i thought of! and the fact that the fandom has just all collectively agreed on the fancasts for the marauders and they haven't changed since tumblr 2014 lmao. I've seen people say their favourite characters from harry potter are ones that don't even exist in the universe (eg grant chapman from atyd). i honestly sometimes forget these things arent in the original story
One of my recent fav fanon’s is just that Dean Winchester isn’t dead/completely ignoring the spn finale. They killed him and so many people just said no
One of my favorite fandom canons is that Stiles Stilinski's dad (Teen Wolf) was named John. He was only ever called Sheriff or simply Stilinski in the show, and fanfiction authors needed a proper name. It was universally agreed to be John, and when his actual name was revealed to be Noah in season 6 at the very least the majority of authors took one look at the name and said nah. Second favorite is definitely the Harry Potter fandom having its own tag on ao3 declaring a fic would be ignoring the heavily disliked epilogue of book 7.
My personal favourite Fanon is Literally the entire King Arthur mythos. What a plot people have come up with based on a couple lines in a 1000+ year old history book. And people are probably even more judgy about it than that Mormor person.
@@captainstabbin5374 I think Chaz is more refering to how some parts of the King Arthur mythos itself was just a few sentences or paragraphs, but have been enlargened into its significance as a sort of of Fannon while lots of other parts have remained fairly dormant.
@@captainstabbin5374 I think they're referring to Historia Regum Brittaniae, a semi-historical account of the kings of Britain which is the first extant document to mention King Arthur.
How dare you imply Kingdom Hearts has weird game titles! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to playing "Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage" on the compilation "Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue"
I'm not involved in any fandoms, I've never had a tumblr, and I stopped watching Supernatural like a decade ago. But I still physically recoiled when you said "Cas" is canonically spelt with two Ss.
I still remember when they first spelled out "Cass" in one of the episode promos... I was still in the fandom on tumblr at the time, and every single person I followed was viscerally uncomfortable and refused to change from Cas
I've never watched Supernatural, so I shouldn't really have an opinion, *and* also I'm not really a prescriptivist... But I have a slight dog in this fight because the contraction of my name is very similar. "Cas" would usually be pronounced /kæz/ to rhyme with "as", while "Cass" would be pronounced /kæs/ to rhyme with "sass"
@@voland6846, eh. English is rarely consistent. And seeing as his name is Castiel, I think it's understandable that people would shorten it to "Cas" without adding an extra letter.
In the vein of “Fanon as course correction” I think one that’s hilarious is the Magnus Archives spelling of the main character “Jon/John”. The author (Jonathan Sims or Jonny) named the main character after himself (rip), he wanted to distinguish the character from the person in some way. So the official name is “John”. It’s in the transcripts, the wiki, etc. But the fandom collectively decided, “No, it’s Jon.” and ran with it. But this lead to the hilarious side effect that newcomers to the fandom knew that “One of the Jon’s is supposed to have an H in it” saw that the entire fandom called the main character “Jon”, so they would then misspell the *author’s* name as “Johnny”. The Magnus Archives fandom is also a fascinating look at consistency in fanon and characterization across a large number of people, especially where the main characters are concerned. Additionally, because it’s a podcast where the author chose to not describe the main characters appearances beyond details like “looks really tired”, all the main characters appearances were up to interpretation. But Jon’s appearance in particular was so consistent that I had to look through the wiki to see if him being from the Middle East or something was canon. It’s not. Same thing with him being nonbinary, and Martin being trans. Also not canon. But if you took a brief look through fandom circles it appears so often you’d be convinced that there was some sort of text behind it. It’s really fascinating!
I still remember when promotional material for Disney's Encanto came out and the TMA fandom took one look at Bruno and shouted THAT'S JON without even needing to consult each other
Sarah, I'd like to genuinely thank you for approaching these topics in the way you do. Fandom culture gets a lot of hate thats partially because were all collectivley cringing about our pasts but oftentimes is just rooted in misogyny and homophobia. Fandoms oftentimes had toxic elements (dont want to downplay that either) but most of my experiences with it were incredibly positive and fun even if its cringy to look back on now. So thank you for speaking about it as it was, and not having a snarky, cruel attitude about it like most do. Its helped me be kinder to myself and heped me not cringe at my past self, but instead remember it as the (mostly) fun and immersive experience it was, something that helped me keep going when i needed it most. Lots of love to you and Emily :)
💖💖💖💖
I once heard from somewhere that if you have never been cringe (in like a harmless way) then you are very boring and therefore cringe.
But seriously, I think cringy fandom stuff gets way more hate than it should. I was a part of the Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Sherlock fandoms when I was a teen and for a long time I was embarrassed about it. However, now that I'm in my late 20s, I've started to look back at those times in fondness as I had a lot of fun and it was great to be so unabashedly excited about something. I tried to avoid things that were "cringe" for a long time, but I've started allowing myself to enjoy such things again. Like recently I've gotten into Danganranpa, which I know is seen as peak cringe. But hey, I like murder mysteries and I like over the top dramatic stories, so I've allowed myself to have fun with it (although I usually don't get too far into the fandoms because I'm 27 and a lot of fandoms are made up of people around 16, and also I'm too old and tired to deal with fandom drama).
You expressed this so well! I love learning about fandom stuff since I'm not really in any but I don't love how many sources that talk about it don't approach the topics with kindness. Love this channel because Sarah obviously has experience in the culture herself, is self-aware and can show empathy to everyone involved.
Oftentimes, the toxicity in fandoms is rooted in misogyny and homophobia
Sarah is right, teen girls get a LOT of shit for things they like. Thanks to Sarah I've been checking myself when it comes to fandoms and teen girl related stuff because lord knows I was just as cringe as a teen boy than any teen girl.
Pov: you are Michael Fassbender. You wake up one morning and suddenly you were an actor for the BBC show Sherlock.
Still better than the Assassin's Creed movie I suppose
New twilight zone episode
You've got Goncharov'ed
Fires his loser agent and hires 2-300 teenage fan artists on tumblr with the true chops to launch his career to the next level
"Not again"
- Michael Fassbender
You KNOW Sarah is a fandom veteran by how casually she explains Roxel by saying "A lot of the time it would be via MPreg." Not even the hint of a flinch; that's fandom cred, is what that is.
I think that part was written by Emily LOL
Jnn bc
@@Liliocelote I mean, Sarah still had to read it with a straight face and no reaction and move on after saying it.
@@northstarjakobs yeah
I sorta wish mpreg wasn't viewed through the lens of 'cringe' in 2022, speaking as a trans dude myself. Of course I prefer it when the guy getting pregnant in these scenarios is written to be explicitly trans, but like... the immediate revulsion and embarrassment at the CONCEPT of a man being pregnant is kinda hurtful. My uterus still works fine, far as I know.
honestly tad strange being just a regular guy is the funniest possible option that could have happened. bill cypher is really pressed about some dude who's just a guy.
In hindsight that's a hilarious joke made better because the fans were expecting the total opposite. It honestly sounds like a joke someone would make in the alternate universe where he is some magical square deity.
That is a hilarious take omg xD I never thought about it like that. Maybe Bill's so pressed because Tad Strange just never reacts to anything in any predictable way, therefore ruining his fun by taking it all in stride (although fanon Tad is still the cooler option imo)?
As a note, my favourite part of GF fandom is when we all collectively ignored Alex Hirsch's idea for human Bill.
@@drecellthealive8912 Human Bill was made in response to Fanon Human Bill.
Alex created him as a joke.
yeah I mean, chaos demon probably hates some guy who's just normal and boring, and in all honesty I fucking love canonical Tad Strange (and he loves bread)
@@thewingedporpoise Especially if said normal guy just...stays normal even during the literal apocalypse of weird.
"It wasnt until the THIRD game in the series, kingdom hearts 2" is a quote that really sums up the series complexity in a nutshell.
I was just coming to say this lol. When you make the rhythm game that's supposed to be a fun celebration of the series music also a CANON PART OF THE STORY, numbers are meaningless...
I don't know what's so complicated about that to be completely honest. Sounds like just following the meme that KH is overly complex by any means possible. KH is plenty overly complex without reaching
Just wait until you find out that Yakuza 6 is the 7th game in the Yakuza series
@@CaptainJLinebeck Just wait until you find out that KH3 is like the tenth game in the franchise.
Kingdom Hearts 3 being like the 7th installment is crazy
My favorite piece of fanon is how the My Hero Academia Fandom collectively decided to make "au- mineta doesn't exist" a tag on ao3. They literally just write him out bc he sucks so bad lol
This is the best thing I have heard today lmao. When I read MHA, the only thing I truly, outright *disliked* was Mineta and couldn't understand why the author wrote him in. I support Mineta erasure
I seen y/n ones that says "reader-replaces-mineta" they decided that if they were going to self insert themselves they would do it with violence, and I applaud that.
@@MissPoplarLeaf Fun (but not really) Fact: the reason the author wrote him in it is because Mineta is his self-insert, according to the MHA hero database which has Horikoshi's A/Ns. Yes, the most hated character in the manga is, ironically, the character with the closest outlooks and personality of the author. Do with this info what you will.
@@tehawsumninja not surprised judging by how the women are written in bnha
AO3 tag "Shinsou Hitoshi Replaces Mineta Minoru" my beloved
My favorite piece of fanon ever formed is the idea that Draco Malfoy smells like green apples because he took a bite of a green apple one time in one of the movies. Absolutely amazing work everyone
Wow I forgot about that. That was a time.
Also the Mauraders Fandom blossoming from a few random posts. A bunch of side characters turned to main ones, Dorcas, Marlene, Mary, Hestia, Benjy....
Flashbacks.
@@Emma.Lou1 the marauders/black family fandom literally confuses me so much because of this. i’ve been a fan of hp for YEARS and pride myself on knowing literally every single small detail and character, and all of a sudden i look at fanworks and they’re just casually mentioning some character that i’ve never heard of 😭
I’m really not a big fan of the character so I’m declaring myself unbiased. But wow I truly feel that particular smell fits him perfectly. Like that’s somehow spot on regardless of it originating as being a lil snack he ate in one of the movies. That’s insanely fitting for the characters whole vibes somehow.
@@embop1266 SAME! or being like "the lady from the wizengamot is Lily's gal pal? where'd i miss that?"
@@ahhh4117 yeah, I was confused too, but then I got fully immersed in the Fandom. It's awesome.
“Bramblepatch Cinderpelt” bruh you really just took Bumblebee Citrussnack and turned him into a pair of warrior cats
🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣💀💀💀💀
It’s so close to being Brambleclaw and Cinderpelt it hurts.
PLEASE THIS IS GIVING ME AN AMAZING MENTAL IMAGE
I nearly crashed my fucking car from how hard I laughed the first time I heard that one
In retrospect, it's telling that so many fans had to invent characters and involved, long-running mysteries to make Sherlock engaging.
the fandom was well and truly past its heyday when I tried to get into it, just on the knowledge that so many people had been so very into it, I supposed there must be something there. I did not realize that 90% of the high quality content was just the fandom itself. Made it a couple episodes deep and bailed
@@RomanticoutlawYou didn't even make it to the major "Moriarty melodrama" stage! (You didn't miss much, you ask me!)
@@Romanticoutlawsame experience but I somehow lasted all the way to sesson 4 before realising how garbage everything actually was, and so I felt betrayed
@@Romanticoutlaw I went to check it out because my brother's first girlfriend was really into it and I was making an effort to bond with her, and I was definitely aware of the whole superwholock being a thing that dominated tumblr but I was a bit old for it (having spent most of my actual fandom days in the deviantart era making Harry Potter and Bleach fanart) but I legitimately could not believe that this series with a fandom comparable to this two ungodly long running shows had a grand total of 6 episodes at the time, it really was insane.
"Columbo's wife isn't real" how dare you. That man is so sweet and he loves his unnamed wife so much and you have the gall to claim he's making that all up. tyranny. lies and slander.
Also his wife got a shitty spinoff show, so there. She must exist.
Columbo's wife is a tulpa
columbo's wife is real and he is a gay man ♥️
nice aurora pic ^^
@@taylerhughson3442 Poly columbo
I remember writing a eulogy to my grandmother, whom I called Mormor, on deviantart back in the day and someone added it to their shipping folder and refused to remove it despite my asking. This is giving me way flashbacks to that, but at least I know WHY now. Thank you!
The internet may have been a mistake 😭
NOOOOOO that’s horrible I’m sorry
That's so sad and must have been so confusing. Beklagar sorgen
holy shit thats insane
That's hilarious omfg
I love that "You'd think the fans shipped Moriarty with himself. No. Not this time." Flashbacks.
@RobotBlue the WHAT
@RobotBlue You didn’t had to remind us, but you did
(ONCELER BIGGERING....)
@RobotBlue stop no please
I never comment on TH-cam but I wanted to share a funny gay anecdote: pasiphile (of These Violent Delights fame) became a close friend when I was going through cancer treatment bc, while I was not into Mormor, there was a bit of a tumblr community for the small Western European country we both live in and we realised we lived in the same town, so they came to visit me in hospital quite often. I'm not going to share any info about them bc they're a v private person BUT back in 2014 one of their followers translated one of their fics to French, and pasiphile asked me to have a look bc I speak French and they didn't back then. I really liked the translation and messaged the translator to congratulate them. Fast forward a bit over seven years (incl. a first irl meeting in 2015 on a joint holiday with pasiphile, who's still one of our best friends!, three years of long distance and three years of living together) and said translator and I are engaged and will be becoming WIVES in july! So I was never a mormor fan (EDIT: I say, like a hypocrite, bc while I was mainly a johnlock fan I did v much write mormor fic bc all my friends + gf were into it) but the mormor fandom did get me a wife :p
Holy shit that's so cool!!!!
So happy for you and your wife & let pasiphile know I love their writing :)
This is such a cute and cool story :) Congrats on the engagement!
That’s honestly the cutest story ever!
This is so good omg! Congratulations to you and your wife!
"The male/male pairings take up a large portion of the fandom. It's...basically impossible to avoid." I like that I can drop this here and no one would guess which fandom is being referred to in advance.
I can only take away certain fandoms that you definitely aren't referencing lol
I am fascinated by that phenomenon! I'm not even into men, and yet most of my pairings have been mxm. I think it might have to do something with how friendships between men are often a lot more developed in media? One is hardly gonna ship women who don't even pass the blechdel test. But I also find there is something interesting about the dynamic between two men, and I generally just prefer men to be into each other over me. I think for people into men gay porn is the obvious answer, and there are some problematic aspects there, but I think there's more layers to it because I know I'm drawn to it as well.
@@CanelaAguila That's a pretty good point actually. A lot of it could just be fetishizing mlm but it is true that men usually end up more fleshed out in stories. I mean I'm a bi man so I have some vested interest in it. But besides that what interests me is that kind of male dynamic of being scared of affection to other men in their friendships. So when two men are showing affection close to intimacy it feels strong. We expect them to be with a woman (which typically is with a female character highly undeveloped), but he has this male best friend with more depth put into his character with a very strong connection to each other. And as authors love to do, they've shoved some queerbaiting in there to top it off. It builds itself with so much potential of something I find myself seeking the conclusion to it in fandom. The porn is really well written too. (My biggest wlw ship is Bubblegum and Marceline and thinking about it, it's 100% because they are developed characters with a great dynamic.)
Even when the media in question doesn't have multiple available male characters to conjoin they will outright invent them to make storytime.
Guys, "people only ship men because all female characters are flat" is moot when said in the comments to a video which discusses a fandom around a ship, one part of which didn't even exist in canon, and the other had to be heavily rewritten to fit in. This even happens in fandoms around media with well developed and interesting female characters in sapphic relationshpis, because men are that more interesting to this specific demographic. Can't be helped.
This was the video that made me fully realize that Sarah is doing actual sociology/anthropology here, besides literary criticism, internet history and general humor. It's much-needed work, and I salute you for it.
oh this is absolutely ethnographic research you're so right
future anthropology class and the teacher’s like “i don’t feel like doing work” and puts on sarah z 😭
@@vicbetz9760imagining it’s the 2070s or 2080s, and 2010s and 20s video essays are studied much as 50s and 60s newspaper op-eds are today
Interesting to rewatch this video in the context of Tumblr's recent fascination with _Goncharov._ People are just making up entire plotlines, character arcs, and romances without having ever seen so much as a clip from the Scorsese original.
There is no original. It originated from a sneaker that, instead of having a knockoff brand logo, had the phrase, “Goncharov, written and directed by Martin Scorsese” on it. We saw this and ran with it as a meme, but there’s no original movie.
@@cosmicdust2668 sorry? Not sure what you mean by this. I took film studies in highschool and we watched it TWICE. Spent at least three weeks discussing it in class, too.
I’m pretty sure it’s real :-/
@@cosmicdust2668 this mf hasn't seen goncharov 😂
@@rhat. amazing
I'm still holding on hope for the hour long Goncharov video. Esperando how actual plot points and themes became solidified in the cannon.
I'm reminded of a fannon vs cannon thing that happened in the Good Omens fandom a few weeks ago. Someone DMed Neil Gaiman to say that they didn't like Aziraphalie's past relationship with Oscar Wilde, only for Gaiman to reply with confusion because neither he, nor did Sir Terry ever write such a thing. Someone jumped in pretty quick to clarify that that's a strictly FANNON theory that Aziraphale knew Oscar Wilde and to please not bother Mr Gaiman with it. This kind of thing happens rather a lot with the GO fandom, with Gaiman being on tumblr and people messaging him with fannon theories.
Honestly fannon and cannon have fused so thoroughly in that fandom that they might as well be one at this point, it’s one of my favourite things about it. Like, even in the book there are authors notes where they say that during writing entire passages would just “appear” in their words and neither terry nor Neil knew who wrote them, and isn’t that what fannon fusing with cannon is, in a sense?
Holy crap people are absolutely insane lol
Dude I've mixed up canon and fanon events before in some of my fandoms and I would be so embarrassed if it were me
That's absolutely hilarious. Neil Gaiman is one of tumblr's finest gems and he must have been so confused
@@pan.gremlin I would say not in that case, because the fandom didn’t exist yet while they were writing the book.
I cannot stress enough how much credibility you earn by being one of the original fans and shippers of this character. I would not want to hear about this from anyone who wasn’t there in the trenches. The voice of the people
this is so so so so so extremely real. I don't want to be cringed at. I need someone to remember the good times and the bad.
@@emch2vy yeah I wanna be cringed WITH lol
Wild how people say that Moran's character is so complex you can't really definitively call him the "bad guy" when in the one story he was in he killed a man because he beat him at a card game
The man was his teammate who was going to snitch on him for cheating.
Yeah, but he’s supposed to be hot, and many people will forgive anything for a hot villain.
@@Multienderguy37 he still killed a man over a card game
Ace attorney villain behavior
idk, i get how he isn't the bad guy, but he certainly was a bad guy
My favorite part of Sherlock was when Sebastian Moran looked directly at the camera, and said, "It's Moran time!"
And then he moraned all over everyone
this is the Worst Timeline
"I need a hat for when Emily is speaking through me" all hail Sarah, the Pope of Emily
CANON
Their child's name should be Samily!
@@sarar4901 OMG that would be too frickin' cute!!! And for nickname variations, not only is gender-neutral Sam there, but Samily could be "Sam ily" as in "Sam I love you" ♥️🥰 And _also_ that could be abbreviated in, like, texts or contact names or whatever as *Sam♥️* 🤩
Her Emiliness
is it a homestuck classpect?
as a gay man who has been familiar with moffat's work from a young age, this fandom has always fascinated me... mostly because i've been keenly aware for years that moffat would never write a character for me intentionally. he's *always* been a misogynist, a homophobe, and ultimately a dullard who writes the same jokes over and over again. i really hope all of this kept him up at night, lmao
What was the first moffat show you watched?
@@danielbergonzi7319 Joking Apart maybe? 🤔
It's why I was always stymied when people INSISTED that he was really writing Johlock. I was, and am, fine with them liking it, wanting it, but was less fine when being shouted down for pointing out it would never actually happen because Moffat was, and is, teh suck. People were so wrapped up in their head-canon, they were giving passes to the crap work he was actually creating.
@@fuckmylifewtf reminds me of a tiktok someone showed me: "Author's note, these characters copyright ME! This fic should be seen as a direct threat, I am seizing the characters in a violent coup."
You're probably just calling him a homophobe because he didn't want to cower to a shitty fanfic-level idea.
When you were describing Sebastian Moran's role in the books my first thought was "oh, so he's the Waluigi"
I don't know if I love or despise this comment.
Tad Strange is low-key one of the funniest bits of fanon ever. Alex absolutely knew fans would take the "square" bait and run wild with it. It was a brilliant and harmless gag at the expense of the fanbase and I love it.
genuinely can’t think of any reason why people wouldn’t like Tad Strange. like he’s literally just a guy I’m so happy he’s doing well
I was there when this happened and I watched the meltdown over the purple square boy being made non-canon, and the subsequent theorizing that the canon Tad wasn't his true form was *hilarious.*
I can’t wait to see how this connects to K-Mart employee training from the late 90’s to early 2000’s
Not this one yet!
hearing sarah talk about dragon ball AF is surreal. it's like having a professor give a lecture about the one time you threw up in class in 8th grade
Making the comparision from AF to Super and completely skipping over how Broly is also involved again was criminal
wait until she knows Super Saiyan Shaggy was willed into existance to a game
also im glad emily is enough of a weeb to call them saiyajin instead of saiyans
This comment is easily the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever loved.
@@trav1247 wait that’s the correct pronunciation? I assumed they were just reading it spelt with a j and didn’t know how to say it since they aren’t a fan.
Alright, this got a like when Sarah screencapped her 2013 8tracks mormor playlist. Truly braver than any US Marine.
That's legit a pretty good playlist and I will die on this hill
i screamed and told my boyfriend "i'm sorry this is what my brain looked like" 😭
It's so funny bc some of these songs can be found in any 20somethings playlist and when one comes on u get to guess which fandom got them into it
I saw it pop up and went "oh noooooo" out loud as I read the songs. It was so quintessentially 2013.
Mormor walked so Goncharov could run.
Goncharov is older than Mormor
Of course, being a 1973 movie. But Tumblr rediscovered this cinematic jem quite recently.@@river3495
Goncharov came out WAY before Sherlock
“Moran can’t be a bumbling idiot, he went to Eton and Oxford!”
Tell me you’re not English without saying you’re not English
Additionally, since the Sherlock Holmes books take place at about the time they were written, Moran almost certainly went on the Oxford-to-military-officer pipeline out of sheer familial trajectory alone.
Honestly, the fact that he’s depicted in the books as sincerely dangerous and not merely some foppish dandy is exceptional.
im not english and ive always heard of oxford as a very prestigious university. whats up w eton and oxford?(not doubting you, i just wanna know)
@@roachno.24 There's a prestige to oxford but a lot of wealthier people (particularly eaton boys) get in via nepotism, not merit. The perfect example of this is the fact that Boris Johnson went to both and is the bumblingest idiot there is.
@@roachno.24 they are pretty much full of posh toffs who only got there through privilege and wealth. Most of our ruling class in the UK went to these schools and look at the callous, pathetic, cruel, greedy morons now. Though I'm sure you'll get a different answer from someone more right wing than me.
@@roachno.24 to make a long story very short: yes it's prestigious but in the way that comes with nepotism and more than a fair amount of classism attached to it. kinda like that scandal in the US about harvard or yale or some such letting in rich kids just because they're rich
as for eton, as someone else here pointed out, it's basically shorthand for being a bumbling idiot from a wealthy background for lol
I think a my favorite part was when Emily possessed Sarah's body and mind and spoke through her in her own voice. That was so epic of her and she should do that more often
trans women are just that powerful
It was a really cool, for lack of a better term, effect
Trans women have the ability to speak through their chosen, truly a powerful people.
*therapist voice*: And is "Lady Emily" here with us now?
pls this is so funny
@@owowowdhxbxgakwlcybwxsimcwx Emily is Polaris from the Little Panda Fighter
Lady Emily is Sarah's Tyler Durden
Their child is called Samily, pass it on.
Honestly watch Emily's videos, they're good
Sarah's totally deadpan delivery of benevolent cucumber's name gives me life
Badminton Tennismatch
Bombadil Rivendell?
@@justineberlein5916 not to be confused with famous singer Bilbo Eyeglass
Benedict Cumberbatch
beandip cumbersome
Calling him Sebby instead of Baz or Basher tells you just how violently American this fandom was
I thought that too
This reminds me a lot of the “Young Marauders” fandom within Harry Potter, specifically that a lot of people agree that a young Remus Lupin would be played by Andrew Garfield.
Yes! I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan, but I am a huge Andrew Garfield fan and I would always see people commenting about Remus Lupin on videos of him and I had no clue why😭
Omg yes, I would be one of those people that arent in the actual HP fandom (i havent even read the books) but i totally am in the young marauders one
The funniest thing is that Andrew is 100% aware of this
I'm truly surprised Sarah didn't cover this! I feel like the Marauders fandom has come up with a TON of fannon that has become really ingrained in people's view of the whole HP universe.
And also that Sirius would be played by Ben Barnes
Fannon and Sherlock is so interesting because there was so little actual cannon content for years of the show’s peak fandom. The hiatus created so much more lore and content that the actual show never could live up to (and didn’t come close).
And the fan made content actually made sense and didn’t have plot holes!
@@treeconsider9382 Eeehhhh, some of it did, just cause there were so many people involved that's bound to happen. But in the whole yeah it was way more entertaining
I mean it's not hard to be better than the show runners, if the all the secondhand information I've heard is anything to go by
yup yup yup all the fan content was why I remained in the sherlock fandom for a few years and loved it so much. the show itself was just some tiny little seed but the fandom was like... hey let's make an amazing garden from this thing lol
@@Gloomdrake the seasonal rot in Sherlock was just insane. The first two seasons are incredibly strong must-watch stuff (one episode in season 1 isn’t amazing but still overall very good). A great cast, great production design, quite clever and witty scripts (if a bit obnoxious). But that’s only six episodes and obviously people wanted more. Unfortunately after such a long gap before season 3 and a plot twist at the end of two that was impossible to explain well enough, season 3 massively disappointed with its convoluted ideas and a tone more interested in being clever than actually spending much time at all on fun mysteries that the audience could get invested in. I thought the second episode was good, but the first and third were just barely coherent. Then there was a Christmas special that ended up functionally being a dream with some nice production design and then season 4 was by this time totally incoherent and basically borderline nonsense. The writers were too obsessed with seeming clever that they forgot to BE clever and write something interesting for any other reason than shock value. Season 4 repeatedly dropped several strange revelations that the audience could never have guessed and Sherlock could never have worked out. Not because they were good twists, that slipped past the less observant viewer, but because they were random twists that didn’t add anything. It no longer felt like a clever show at the top of its game extolling the fun of solving mysteries by deductions beyond the minds of many (but not impossible), it had the weird vibe of a desperate show throwing sudden surprises at you in the hope that you don’t notice that none of it means much. For such a limited series, it declined so quickly and for no apparent reason. Perhaps they didn’t want to be formulaic, but I think it’d be very uncharitable of someone to argue that the show was formulaic after just six (good) episodes. Arguably, it only became overly familiar in the later seasons, when the writers had apparently run out of sensible ideas (which is a curious concept, if true, given the material obviously remaining in the various books they hadn’t adapted).
Sorry rant over. It’s just dispiriting really. I really would recommend series 1 and 2 though, they’re very good and then I’d use series 3 episode 2 as an alternative finale (though that might just be a personal preference).
Sarah is honestly one of the only youtubers who can be like “here’s a 75 minute long video essay where I only spend about 20 minutes talking about the thing referenced in the title” and I’ll watch every single second of it.
How does she do it? Like she's start talking, and I'm like "yess, i wanna hear everything you gotta say" hahah impressive
I’ll do it twice. Because her work is great background noise for chores.
The phrase "Sarah Z and Lady Emily" brings to mind a comic series about two time travellers, one from the future and one from the Victorian era- skipping around through time and solving Fandom mysteries- and I wish I could draw now
Move over Holmes and Watson, it’s time for Sarah Z and Lady Emily.
"The writers ignored the fact that he died in the show and brought him back no questions asked"
I mean, considering how they treated his and Sherlock's deaths in the show I think it's fair
Agreed.
BBC Sherlock was like Charlize Theron's character in Arrested Development; we only thought it was smart because it was in a British accent.
@@josephkolar3443 🤦🏻♂️
When was he alive after his death
Yeah, the showwriters also ignored the fact that he was dead lol
I'm incredibly upset that sherlock-moriarty was not called 'Morlock'. 'Sheriarty'? Really?
At least it wasn't called shiarty or something
Merlock you say?
Shoulda been called sharty
@@ThatWeirdo04 Sharty's like a melody in my head
@@rumaddzero9100 🧜♂️♥️🧜♂️ 😁👍
Anybody read that Hogwarts AU where student John makes friends with the mermaid in the lake, Sherlock? 😁
I’ve never in my life been a kingdom heartie and I never knew why roxas was named roxas so hearing “he’s named roxas because it’s an anagram of sora but with an x in the middle” took me out so hard I gained ragdoll physics
It gets funnier when you learn the reason behind the x
@@parox96 omg what's the reason?
@@AgentSteffi Spoilers for later games, also I'm simplifying things a bit so some details are left out:
The ultimate goal of the the main villain, Xehanort, is to create something called a χ-blade (pronounced 'key-blade' using the Greek letter χ/chi) which is apparently a literal key to Kingdom Hearts that can be formed by a clash between pure Light and pure Darkness. The prequel _Birth By Sleep_ was his first attempt to do so: he tore the darkness out of his student Ventus's heart, creating a sentient psuedo-Heartless named Vanitas, then sent Ventus away to master the Keyblade; When Ventus got strong enough, he would fight/reunite with Vanitas, and the clash would produce the χ-blade with Vanitas in control. This actually worked, but a combination of Ventus fighting from the inside and his friend Aqua fighting Vanitas led to the χ-blade getting shattered and Ventus going comatose.
Organization XIII, as it turns out, was part of Xehanort's second attempt at making the χ-blade. The Organization's leader, Xemnas, was actually Xehanort's Nobody (formed when Xehanort *willingly* gave his heart to the darkness) and his ultimate goal was to use Kingdom Hearts to corrupt the other members into more Xehanorts, in order to gather thirteen pure Darknesses for the χ-blade. That's why all the Organization members have 'X' in their name; they've been marked as vessels for Xehanort's Darkness for the χ-blade plan.
Please tell me that "kingdom hearties" is actually what fans of kingdom hearts are calling themselves
@@thewaitingarea1225 It's not.
It's actually just a really unoriginal "Kingdom Hearts fan"
As someone who missed most of the Sherlock fandom and is currently studying Norwegian, I cannot describe how disorienting it was to see romantic fanart below the word "GRANDMA". I had no idea what planet I was on for a second there.
I love that Sarah z has managed to make an entire successful TH-cam channel out of reminding everyone of a certain age of the cringy shit we did in our teens and letting us reminisce on it
She’s basically one of TH-cam’s foremost Tumblr historians, along with Strange Æons and Izzyzz
Not only that, I kinda miss not sharing the cringe with you. Must have been a great time.
As a post from the era famously said, "Yes I am cringe, but I am free!"
As a non native english speaker who watched Sherlock as a teen and interacted with english-speaking fandom spaces when I didn't speak or understand the language very well (and therefore I lost much subtext and context to what was being posted and written), I am ASTOUNDED to discover now, that I am an adult, after all this time, that Moran was never in the show. I swear to you I thought until this very moment he was in the show but somehow I'd forgot about him, because of how the fandom spoke and wrote of him!! this is so funny
ok but based on this description of moran from the books, he would have been a good final villain (would have explained all the weird moriarty stock footage) - could have had him vs watson while sherlock was somehow incapacitated, would have been cool
always remember they could have done something exciting and cool and they chose to make the dog a small pirate child
You had 69 likes on this comment when I read it I'm sorry I had to like it myself and ruin that cause small pirate child made me choke and scare my cat
Honestly don't know why they went with "Sherlock has an insane, evil genius sister that no one knows about," rather than just following the books where Moran is the last member of Moriarty's criminal organisation left standing.
holy shit that's going to be the plot of the _real_ secret final season where Johnlock gets confirmed isn't it
LITerally
Ah, but for that, the writers would have needed to remember that Watson was there. Checkmate.
One of my favorite examples of fanon is Link from the legend of Zelda is sometimes written as mute and signs to communicate. No questions asked and lives peacefully with the the other interpretation of Link who is not mute but both characters are still written with the same personality according to their game's canon.
Or, if you want to make a pun.
Their games Ganon
I’ve also seen this interpretation of Red from Pokémon
@@notapplicable6985 I'm not so sure they're living peacefully in that case 🙃
@Agent Stache I love that hc!
It's also pretty inline with why Link doesn't speak in the first place. It's mostly to let fans be in the shoes of link and if those shoes are filled with people who like him as mute then there's nothing stopping it
As a swede I can’t help but find it very funny that their ship name is literally the Swedish word for grandma (mormor)
Mum-mum.
same
Ikr, as a Dane the thumbnail confused my language brain so much. Grandma and fanon??
@@stormwalkers98 That was my exact reaction!
i was also so confused lol sometimes youtube translates (horribly) to swedish so i was like what?
Tad Strange’s appearance actually made things more creative, since someone who’s a fan of both the show and podcast made connections between Gravity Falls and Night Vale. Example: Tad likes bread, bread is banned in Night Vale. One thing led to another, Tad was originally from Night Vale and moved to Gravity Falls.
That's such a good connection, I never thought of that.
I'd like to imagine he wanted to walk on the wild side and realised he'd only ever get his wheat/wheat by-product/bread fix by leaving. So, packing up and moving to Gravity Falls it was!
@@thejasminedragonmerchant6843 i guees that choice didnt age well cobsidering the series finale
This reminds me of when tumblr created a fake Greek goddess that was redundant because she basically did the same job as the furies
Or the fake "condition" made by a Daria fanfic.
That sounds vaugely familiar but I can't recall, what was she named?
@@Starburst514 mespyreian?
@@Starburst514 Mesperyian. Strange Aeons made a video about her and the related Tumblr drama recently.
@@Snips.Snails.Fairytales alexandria's genesis was from a daria fanfic??
might i add that part of the harry potter fandom took harry’s dad and his friends + a bunch of characters mentioned once and turned it into a whole fandom with hundreds of fan fiction for itself as a stand alone thing. there’s collective agreed upon personality traits, clothing choices, fancasts, ships ect.. for each character. it’s like a whole nother story it’s pretty amazing and some fans who like it don’t even accosiate with the main series
Around about last year I dipped my toes into the marauders fandom and looking back it’s pretty funny to think about.
I was waiting for a marauders mention, I got into the fandom solely because of how wild it was to me that an entire fandom was basically made from nothing
I never read/watched "Harry Potter" but I was the right age so I friends who were writing Marauders fanfic back in the mid-aughts and for twenty years, until I scrolled through the comments of this video, I fully assumed there was a prequel novel (or even series) starring the parents and their friends. They were only mentioned?! That's amazing.
@@k.m.2629 literally it’s just so awesome that an entire fandom was formed around basically non existent characters
I kinda like how the fandom took a underused Sherlock Holmes character and created a new version of him. Since Sherlock is in the public domain, that kinda makes this Sebastian Moran just as canon as any of the other BBC Sherlock characters
Just breaking into the TV show with fanart of a book character under your arm yelling THIS IS MINE I BROUGHT IT FROM HOME
BBC Sherlock is a modern AU fanfic and that is barely even false enough to be a good joke
Yeah, pretty much. As someone who keeps up with seasonal anime I'll sometimes see japanese anime adaptations of the Sherlock setting such as Kabukicho Sherlock and Yuukoku no Moriarty that put their own new spin on it and in practice it comes down to the same thing.
As a trans woman, I understand people's hesitance to have cis influencers speak for us - in our stead. But there are already plenty of trans voices speaking out, and I, for one, am always glad to see cis allies who have done research and also speak out about good/bad representation. With or without co-writer Emily, I'd still be glad you've spoken about these issues in a sensitive and empathetic way.
I find ideas like "allies should sit down and shut up and let minorities have the mic" get interpreted in a weird and unhelpful way, particularly by allies and antagonists. People act like it literally means "if this subject matter doesn't effect you personally in your day to day life, then you don't get to make any sort of commentary on it at all" which is,,,, like the opposite of helpful. Don't get me wrong, people who are TOTALLY uneducated on a subject shouldn't get to have the final word on it [a popular example being that cis men shouldnt get to make life changing legal decisions about women's bodies bc they often times have literally no concept of femme/AFAB/women experiences, therefore they make TERRIBLE decisions bc they know nothing! everyone can agree on that.] but if we apply this idea to every situation regardless of the context, then we're asking allies to literally do nothing, to ignore the very people theyre supposed to be allying with.
I have a straight friend who likes to ask alot of questions about my asexuality and gender expression, which is great! she wants to try and understand my perspective as best as she can, not only because she is my friend who cares about me, but also so she can step in and educate someone else who might be asking when she's given the opportunity. I was really touched when she first started doing this, bc I wasn't expecting it at all, and she said "isn't this the literal point of being an ally? it's not your job to go around explaining and defending your existence to everyone who asks about it, so why not take some of the burden off of your shoulders, especially when the topic comes up and you aren't here to explain it." and I had never thought of that before. She always tries to use my own words and clarifies that she can only explain so much before referring people to a more direct source of information [I.E. an actual asexual person] and I feel like that is the standard we should REALLY be holding people to.
my point being, i have no problem with (and honestly encourage) people of privilege with influential platforms being confident enough to say "since i dont have this lived experience, here are the words of someone who does and you should listen to them" and i just...as long as the facts are correct and the opinions are coming from a well intentioned, credible, and meaningful source, i don't get why we so often brush people off. honestly, it's very dismissive, and i've only seen it used in dismissive ways by people who don't want their views to be challenged, and that shit is so frustrating. like what more do you want? not every single member of a marginalized group wants to spend all their time and energy educating people about their experiences, and they shouldn't have to do that to have their experiences validated and discussed in media.
@@TheRaychenator I agree so much. It's honestly relaxing when a cis person with a platform speaks up for trans people (if they know what they are talking about). Makes me feel like I can trust the community around them a bit more too, knowing their fans should at least somewhat understand me. A space where I don't have to explain myself. It's also really validating. I know I shouldn't care about cis people's approval but fuck does it come with a breath of fresh air when it happens.
@@karkatvantass3730 yes! im fortunate enough that i dont have to actively participate in super heteronormative spaces every single day, so when i DO have to participate in those spaces it can be jarring and isolating immediately and having literally anyone in those spaces just be like "yeah i know what queer terms mean, you dont have to explain them to me" or even as little as "yeah i know someone who i trans and i love them" is such a relief. its the bare minimum and im grateful but exhausted LOL
@@ichorlight you're totally valid in feeling that way and if emily was a cis man saying this shit, i would absolutely feel apprehension. It's not unreasonable to express that you instinctually have a hard time trusting a group of people who have systemic power over you. As someone who is obviously super white, i am totally not offended when a person of color seems not to trust me right away, so in the same way i don't knock you for being mistrustful of cis people in trans spaces. i just think its counterproductive to actively antagonize and slander our genuine allies, which is what it seems like people seem to do to Emily.
@@TheRaychenator God man it feels a bit embarrassing sometimes to want that validation, and it really is the bare minimum, but I barely see it. Just the little moments of a hetero space accepting me and not bothering the shit out of me over it feels fucking fantastic. The other day I was accidentally outed at work (I won't bother explaining). The manager that heard immediately went "Do you go by other pronouns?" I said yeah but I'm not out yet and she just told me to let her know if I wanted to start going by different pronouns. It was such a small and short interaction, but it meant a lot to me.
27:08 "Fans agreeing on a specific middle or last name for a character who never canonically got one." I know you're not talking about Anthony "Janthony" Crowley but it's what I thought of immediately, to my shame.
disappointed we didnt decide on anthony jorts crowley but it is what it is
Does anyone know any other characters where this happened? Because I want a Holy Trinity comprised of them, Anthony Janthony Crowley and Martin Kartin Blackwood.
@@irisoftheeye I obviously need to read more TMA fic, I hadn't heard of Martin Kartin Blackwood and it's gold
@@CyreneDuVent other varieties include Martin Knife Blackwood and Martin KillABitch Blackwood.
"Well, 2022 so far has been a wash - but on the plus side: I never have to hear about or learn anything new about BBC's Sherlock ever again for the rest of my life."
*sees the new Sarah Z video has dropped*
"Welp. Time to partake in that good ol' fashioned Sherlock bone hurting juice."
oooww my bones
oh man bone hurting juice is a phrase i have not heard since... actually since fandom was still watching sherlock unironically i think. thank you for bringing it back into my life
@@jupitermelichios392 quick question for the purpose of internet etymology: what year would you guess that was in? i don’t remember seeing it on tumblr that much but i have a bad memory, so im not super aware of the phrase. but i just checked Know Your Meme, which said the origin was in 2016. I was graduating high school in 2016, and i was most involved with Sherlock fandom tumblr at least 3 years before then. If you remember seeing it before 2016, someone needs to update the Know Your Meme page.
Tbh I feel like they RARELY credit tumblr, so that makes sense
I went into this year optimistic but we've already got violent protesters and a war.
The 20s keeps being rough, I suppose we're getting some good stuff to numb the pain at least.
I will always remember the pre-movie release Frozen fandom naming Hans’ horse Lemon. No clue who started it, we all just called him that. Eventually, Jennifer Lee gave Hans’ horse a canon name: Sitron, which is Norwegian for Lemon. 🥰
Reminds me of when the Pokémon fandom used to call Ghetsis „Dennis“ pre-release because his battle theme was leaked and fans thought the voice chanting his name sounded like „Dennis“. Good times.
also pokemon related but it reminds me how the term "shiny" was coined by fans and eventually got picked up and became canon
I’m in a fandom where an unnamed guard who say sa few things in passing with the fandom’s MC somehow ended up with the fan name Ben Castiel and has a fanbase of his own that the company, IGG, acknowledges now. No one knows how it started or who first called him that. It’s just…always been.
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria Isn't that the Fire Emblem guard who won the poll and is now gonna be important in Heroes?
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandriaand he’s a playable character and absolute beast in fire emblem: three hopes. It’s amazing
My biggest experience with this was in the Detroit: Become Human fandom, where one of the endings involves one of the main android characters being replaced with a blue-eyed, more advanced, 'perfect' version of himself. He appears for a one-minute scene, says nothing, does nothing, and isn't even part of the more popular Good Ending.
And then someone said 'What if we shipped him with this other cop character who appears in, like, three or four scenes, and his only canon character trait is being an android-hating a-hole that likes coffee?' Boom, Reed900.
It's honestly one of my favorite things about fandom, taking insignificant scraps and turning them into something that a big segment of people care about, to the point that it's just a normal part of fandom life that the creators never would've guessed would catch on.
(Also, 'NaruMitsu is canon' made me very happy.)
Okay, so, full confession - I’ve never played D:BH, but I absolutely loved those Reed900 fanmade films.
Also Gavin Reed being trans was a VERY popular headcanon in a lot of fics for, from what I can tell, exactly 0 canon reasons (not that you need a canon reason for a trans headcanon, obvs, and I'm always up for one, but it's interesting how pervasive it was when his main character trait is being a jerk)
Similar situation in the Pathologic fandom (a game about doctors in a Russian steppe town infested by the plague, which you would think wouldn't have much of a fandom, let alone fanfic & fanon) where 80% of the fanbase decided Daniil is trans, but at least these are playable characters lol
@@Flameclaw123 Omg thank you. for mentioning Pathologic, I forgot what that game was called for the longest time lmao
@@chaoticcanine Haha happy to assist
I scrolled through these comments just waiting for someone to mention Gavin or Nines. It was genuinely a bit jarring to find out that there’s never a single canon mention of him having a cat, or being trans
OH I thought this was gonna be like My Little Pony and how everybody collectively made up personalities for every background pony, but its instead like if they got a MLP chararacter from the earlier shows and pretended they were a main character
remember when bronys called the blue pony "Colgate" before her canon name appears in the show? good times
Me pretending Lyra was Minty
The most egregious example is when they all renamed Time Twister into Dr. Hooves, despite not being a doctor at all. "But _the_ Doctor is not _a_ doctor, he's just the place the word 'doctor' comes from (or something... I don't watch that show)." Yeah, well in any case they eventually found some stupid reason to give him THE SCARF™ in the actual show, just because fans couldn't be comprehend the fact that someone with an hourglass cutiemark _wouldn't_ be an actual time traveler.
Good to have my fanon theory that Emily can subsume Sarah's will and pilot her body around like a meat puppet officially confirmed!
She Ratatouille-ing Sarah
I'm glad to live in a world where "sometimes by mpreg" is a casual statement
My favourite Twin Peaks theory was that the end of The Return makes sense if you watched the last 2 episodes at the same time. A thing I absolutely did
Awww the only response to We're in Hell is from a pr0nbot ☹ That's so sad.
Yeah, I did the side-by-side too... honestly I didn't get much from it. "Sense-making" isn't what I'm looking for from Lynch, at least not in a linear sense. But even though it might be (probably is lol) coincidental, it definitely does hit the same beats. I didn't get much from it, but it was an interesting experience.
…………. Did it?
@@Mirbeet ^^ i would also like to know if it did
It makes a *kind* of sense. Was it designed to be watched that way? I don't think so, Lynch has always resisted attempts to explain his work. But, you know - authorial intent doesn't = "meaning."
Give it a shot. If you like it, if it gives the show resonance for you, it's worth doing.
I did that too and I was still confused as hell
my toxic trait is completely believing seb was just offscreen for all of sherlock. you cant prove that he Wasn't the sniper trained on john at the pool
Back when I was into Harry Potter, around 2008-2013, I almost exclusively read fics about the Marauders. And there was so much fanon content, that would repeat itself in almost every fic and piece of fanart, taht I just thought it was actual canon. When I reread the books later and realized most of what I thought I knew about the Marauders was from fanfiction, I was honestly shocked. So much of it was so consistent in the fandom.
Mauraders fanon was hugely influenced by The Shoebox Project. I can't say how much of it was original to The Shoebox Project or whether that one work just popularized a lot of it, but it was an astonishingly unifying work in the mid-aughts--well before the existence of Ao3.
the marauders have had a massive resurgence thanks to tiktok and the fic all the young dudes, it’s funny to see the same fan casts as in 2014 even though the actors are now 30-35
@@mastelsa What's The Shoebox Project?
@@missybarbour6885 It was a multimedia fanfic project that used (or at least started out with) the framing device of a shoebox full of school memorabilia kept under Remus Lupin's bed. There were two authors who did the epistolary portions of the fic--one who wrote as Remus and one who wrote as Sirius. Other bits are written as traditional fic chapters that accompany and contextualize fanart "photographs." You can still find it in .pdf form by searching it, and I think at this point it has also been uploaded to Ao3
@@mastelsa Interesting! I can't believe I never ran across that on tumblr in 2014. I always think I was super deep into a fandom until I find somebody else chilling at the bottom of the Marianas Trench
another tiny example of collectively agreed upon fanon being quietly slipped into the canon of a franchise is the name for shiny Pokemon! They were originally called "differently-colored-pokemon" iirc (or something similar) with the name shiny only being used in official games starting in Gen 5. Until then, the word "shiny" had been a label applied only by fans--it just got so popular that it was made official!
Really? I had no idea that was a fan thing despite the fact that I've been playing since gen 4!
same with smash ‘tilts’
Eeveelution was a fan-term but became the name of a theme deck back in like 2002-2003 so that's another one!
They were called 'shining' in the tcg but not 'shiny' till an NPC explicitly talks about them in black/white
Werent they called "chromatic pokemon" ? Maybe thats just the french translation, but thats always what they were called on the official wiki i used to browse 🤔
the name "mormor" is so fucking funny. it has the same energy of "blorbo from my shows"
Ah yes, blorbo, my favourite character in my shows
don’t forget gulp shitto
Mormor from my collective fandom hivemind
blorbo... you know... from my shows
I just find it really funny because mormor means grandmother in swedish, it just seems like the last candidate for a ship name 😭
15:07 i love how different the Canadian perspective on Eton and Oxford is from the English perspective: in England if you go to Eton you’re basically automatically categorised as a ‘bumbling idiot’ - just a very rich one
"It wasn't until the third game in the franchise...Kingdom Heart 2..." Why did that make me laugh so damn hard
Because it's true
the entire franchise's energy is summarised in that sentence
As someone who just started watching and saw this comment, I cannot wait to see how Kingdom Hearts gets into all this.
damn, me too : )
Because Kingdom Hearts is a bastion of chaos and we love it for that.
God this reminds me of the Irene Adler me and my friend fanoned prior to Season 2. She was a model from New Jersey who was very pretty and acted very dumb on purpose, which made it easier for her to manipulate Sherlock. In the story my friend and I wrote, John and Sherlock get contacted by an American senator who wants them to get photos that Irene took of her and the senator during a brief fling they had, which the senator thinks will be used to blackmail him. It turns out that Irene didn’t know the senator at all, and that the photos are actually of her and ANOTHER politician, a kind former boyfriend of Irene’s, who the senator is planning on blackmailing once Sherlock gets the photos for him. Sherlock gives the senator the photos anyway, but it turns out they have an embedded virus that Irene programmed that exposes the senator’s various blackmailing schemes as soon as he publishes the photos. Sherlock admires that Irene was able to trick him and John tries to convince her to join them in solving crimes, but instead she marries her nice politician ex and moves to Washington DC to be a trophy wife who actually is the politically smart one in the marriage (since her husband is a bit of a himbo). It was super silly and CLEARLY written by two fifteen year old girls, but honestly I think it was more faithful to the spirit of the original A Scandal in Bohemia story than the show ended up being.
Edit: WOW this got way more of a response than I expected!! Thanks so much for your kind words everyone! We never published it, but the story was called A Scandal in Leonia (which is the name of a township in New Jersey, i thought it was super clever lmao) and the faceclaim for Irene was Paris Hilton.
This is ten million times better than Irene “definitely the new sexy” in the show
Don't belittle your own work. I think it sounds amazing and makes a lot of sense. 👏 Thank you for sharing!
I prefer this to the show!
th-cam.com/video/MyFhsmJ5wzc/w-d-xo.html
Fax yes
this is such a good execution i would have loved to read it
My favorite 'fanon took it and did crazy stuff' story is the magnus archives- which is odd, because the fanon is pretty close to the show, and all the canon ships are really popular- except one. Peter/ Elias is insanely popular and terribly funny. They are two of the main villians. They are each others only real friends. In fanon they are at least 6 times divorced/ remarried, and absolutely horrible for each other. It's so much fun.
Its great because it would contradict so much of the actual plot, yet the dynamic is apparently 100% intentional, and the marry/divorce meme was started by Peters actor
Ngl I've never seen a more unified fanon than TMA's fanon, especially regarding the appearances of the characters (and also the _entire_ fandom's stubborn refusal to spell Jon as "John" even though that's technically the canon spelling lmao)
oh man yeah i was SO ready to hear this topic specifically around podcasts - even tho sarah and emily didnt end up saying anything about im glad this example in particular is down here LOL
@@aw7145 when sarah started talking about the cas vs cass thing in the supernatural fandom my mind instantly went to the tma fandom's refusal to spell jon's name as john, no matter what rusty quill has to say on the matter
I will say there are two big examples of fanon I see in the tma fandom that often supercede canon there, that being daisy and basira not actually being a romantic couple and the fact that a lot of the main cast is often headcanoned as poc. While it's a really great thing that fandom is becoming more inclusive and open to headcanoned appearances that aren't skinny white people, but it also sort of hides the fact that well, the magnus archives source media DOES have issues with it's poc representation.
The only main cast member who is canonically a POC is Basira, who is also a cop who's story is used to explore police brutality, and while there are a few nods to her facing discrimination in the workplace, the fact that she's a poc contributing to police brutality when irl it's often poc facing that violence isn't really touched upon or a big part of her arc, which is where you can really tell this was written by a white writer. All other canon poc characters are villains like Jude Perry and Manuela Dominguez. But it doesn't really get talked about in favor of discussing the queer rep in the podcast.
i first encountered the whole "fandoms turn on people who don't adhere to fanon" thing with welcome to night vale and fanart of cecil. i honestly didn't realize people were serious about him looking like his voice actor (or about him being a blond white guy in general) until artists i liked started getting harassed over their art of him as a person of color. it's bizarre to me that people could get so wrapped-up in their own ideas of media that they would violently reject any deviation from them. like i'd seen plenty of stuff i didn't like that was popular fanon, but mostly i just found it annoying and ignored it. but people just take this stuff personally in a way that i'd never seen before in fandom spaces.
i wonder if part of it has something to do with how we're encouraged as fans/consumers to treat liking a certain piece of media as a defining character trait. brands want us to make "star wars fan" a part of our identity instead of just a common interest, you know? and it's easy to see how people contradicting something someone deeply identifies with could lead to lashing out, which then gets wildly magnified because internet, and suddenly people are getting death threats because they prefer to think of a character as a black woman instead of a white man or some shit like that.
i have nothing against poc cecil myself but i think part of it might have been the whole thing about how dylan marron was specifically cast to read carlos because the producers didn't feel comfortable having a white man read for a queer latino character - people probably assumed that attitude carried over to cecil, if they didn't dislike it for "but skinny white man uwu" reasons or whatever
Remember console wars back in the early 2000s? You are absolutely right. Any attack on something that we like is an attack on the one (and everyone) who likes the thing in question. Because when we are young what we like becomes a part of us. It’s crazy how fiction and hobbies become an extension of our personal. It’s almost kind of creepy how self conscious we are if something we like is perceived as wrong, bad or not as good as other concepts. Like where does this sense come from? Any psyche majors out there to explain this phenomenon?
Lol that just kinda sounds like casual fandom racism. Ironic since the show itself kinda goes out of its way to be inclusive :/
@@birdiejett3163 unfortunately, yeah.
Man, thank God I never drew my interpretation of Cecil because he 100% looks like an Eldritch entity in my head lmao
It sucks that that artist was harassed for drawing a character that doesn't even have a canonical appearance. The point of WTNV is that he's just... a voice. His description is vague on purpouse
41:13 - never forget: when Capcom collaborated with Material Crown to make Ace Attorney themed jewelry, they literally MADE A PAIR OF RINGS FOR THESE TWO. you speak the absolute truth
It's important to remember in Japan, young women are seen as a highly desirable demographic and appealing to them and their interests is 100% a thing. Capcom made Sengoku Basara (Samurai Kings in English) as a fighting game in '05. The assumption was, that guys were going to play it. Instead they found out the people buying it were women, who were pairing off all the male characters. Capcom went with it and made a lot more games, anime and stage shows. (And like Ace Attorney it got a Takarazuka Musical.) I'm truly not surprised to hear about themed jewelry for Ace Attorney. I use to have the Edgeworth official tea cup and saucer, but the saucer broke in a move.
i mean the ace attorney development team literally researched and read a bunch of BL manga to build their relationship after seeing how many people shipped them
@@mudbucket1354 it’s what we deserve
They’re husbands, your honour.
@@rachelk7784 It's interesting because the demographic is treated no more or less seriously in Japan than any other with the combination of easy-to-meet standards and ample disposable income, but it comes across and bizarre pandering to the West, simply because it's a fandom of young girls and teens that is taken on their own merits instead of being regarding as the Official Punching Bag of all other media subcultures.
living for sarah saying "Ive read it its good" after mentioning a fic
You gotta give credit when it’s due
I'm going to be real, I read that fic bc of this video, and had 0 idea about Mormor while and prior to reading it, plus I'd only seen like 3 episodes of Sherlock and hated it and jesus christ, it IS really fucking good
As someone steeped in The SCP Foundation, aka “Fanon/Creative Writing Community spawned from a 4chan creepypasta,” it’s super interesting to see how similar things form from more mainstream media properties. Thanks for the video!
i was gonna say i found myself drawing so many parallels to scp while watching this LMAO !!! i love seeing how fanon becomes a pseudo-canon
I didn’t think of that but dang that’s true! It’s a big reason why I like SCP so much since the canon is so flexible since it’s all fanon basically.
Hi Dr Sherman! Wouldn't have expected to find you here!
Holy moly I watch your vids ?!?
God yes, I was into Creepypasta for awhile so the whole fanon thing is second nature to me. So to see it talked about in relation to a legit show is so fascinating to me! Especially with a whole made up character since that's basically what all the Creepypasta characters are.
my proudest moment in fanon was giving a character a cat and having at least one person run with it in their fanworks 🥺
What was the fandom?
Did you create General Hux’s cat Millicent?????
_My_ proudest moment in fanon was inspiring two other writers to portray Principal Skinner from _The Simpsons_ as autistic.
I just LOST IT when she mentioned Voltron, I've been wondering if she'd ever talk about the mess that the fandom became at the end
SAMEEEE!!!! I really hope she does cause vld was a shitshow
@@Avioulii she said on tumblr she won't be making a voltron video bcs she doesn't make videos on fandoms she wasn't in
As someone who was never in the Fandom, What happened? I've heard crazy things.
@@Emma.Lou1 there’s a video by Izzzyzzz that explains it better than any comment could easily summarise it.
As I am currently rewatching VLD for the first time after it ended, I got whiplashed hard when Sarah mentioned it lol
NGL, I thought the title card said ‘Mormon and Fandom’ and thought it was going to be a deep dive into Christian fandoms, with a focus on Mormons in particular
A sequel to the fake My Immortal author video
as someone who is currently reading through the Jesus/Judas tag on AO3, this comment just hit different
@@chaosnoelle the _Bible_ has fanfiction? 😐
@@paisleesheppard5629 well the fandom I'm reading fics in is Jesus Christ Superstar to be exact, but yeah. It does.
@@paisleesheppard5629 of course it has.
I finished watching this hours ago and I only just realized... you posted this on Lunar New Year... the year of the TIGER. Well played, Ms. Z, well played. **slow claps in astonishment**
"There's no reason to talk about Sherlock in 2022."
*Year of the Tiger dawns, memories of Mormor awaken*
You mentioned it yourself, but given that mormor means grandma in my language, I could never get into this ship. Imagine reblogging nsfw fanart and tagging it “grandma” lol
LMFAOOO OH NOOO
The hold ‘little lion man’ had on 2013 8tracks fanmixes is unmatched. Literally everyone had that song 😭
I had it stuck in my head YESTERDAY it continues to dominate fandom
And mother mother, before tiktok it used to rule 8tracks
The music playing in 2013 in general defined my Homestuck experience tbh.
Gotta love people who heroically "defend" Emily by pretty much assuming she has no agency whatsoever.
Nobody oppresses and tramples over people more than an idiot with a soapbox to stand on. People will look for whatever excuse they can to be awful while patting themselves on the back for how self-righteous they are, instead of actually putting thought and effort into being better people that actually care about others.
@@Xeronoia Have you ever tried to be a better person that actually cares about others?
'cuz I haven't and I want to know what it's like. ngl, sounds difficult :P
@@BeepSmile It's easier than it sounds. For instance, when you're trying to be considerate - make sure you're not stuck in your own head about it. A lot of parents make this mistake for example, trying to do something nice/considereate/etc but end up inconveniencing their kid. And a lot of them get defensive about it too when it doesnt go how they pictured it, instead of acknowledging that they made a mistake and to try and remember to *actually* be considerate in the future. When it comes to things like that, your intentions don't matter - only the results of your actions/behavior and how they're received by the other person matter. (That said, sometimes someone else - the kid in the case of this example - is just being an unreasonable asshole. What can be difficult is determining when you're wrong or when they are, and an important part of that is always engaging in self-reflection.)
As for bigger world things, a lot of it boils down to not being bandwagony, don't spread hateful bullshit, focus on tangible effects you can have on things instead of virtue signaling or lipservice. As another example, buying a Tesla is worse for the environment than normal cars are due to how Tesla cars are produced causing a lot of severe environmental damage. So, if you actually care about the environment, do NOT buy a Tesla and instead do something else. Like get a hybrid car, as one alternative.
@@BeepSmile what are you talking about? Why are you saying these things?
@@sergiorubens8475 I was attempting self deprecating humour
"Sheriarty" sounds far too reminiscent of "shart", which means I'm absolutely here for it 👌
@stay mad misread that as shawty 😰
molmes
thank god the yuumori fandom had the smarter idea of naming the ship "sherliam"
17:26 when Nico bought (stole?) a Happy Meal THAT HE DIDN'T EVEN EAT to just throw it in a hole in the ground and everyone just decided Happy Meals are a necessary background object in almost every single fanart of him, my boy can't escape the woobifying
As someone who wrote well-known MorMor fanfiction in not one, but multiple languages, something that greatly fascinates me is that while the English-speaking fandom eventually died out, the much smaller German and Russian communities continue to persist as part of the Sherlock fandom to this day. This definitely plays it's part in the way fandom culturally exists online.
God i love the internet
Do you know of any Moran fanart or writing that actually write him as an Indian character? I never see them, and Sarah mention that it exists.
a lot of fandoms actually persists in other languages even if they're smaller. i think most of it is due to the fact that what is "discovered" or the trends in the English fandom take longer to get to the other languages
The fact that Emily had you say "saiyajin" instead of "saiyan" shows she's a true OG fan.
wait wait where
i know my roots
@@LadyEmilyPresents Never spoken to you before but I wanted to say. You are really cool!
what's the difference? i literally learned to read with the Dragon Ball manga and it was always spelt "Saiyan", in french at least.
@@ha_des in Latin America, AKA where the hype for AF was strongest, instead of super saiyan it was translated into "Super Saiyajin" because saiyan sounds weird in Spanish
Okay but can we get more emily voiceovers with sarah mouthing along, cus that was fucking hysterical
yes please that was hilarious
Timestamp?
@@PhantomFandoms 59:54
It was also perfectly timed.
My first exposure to Chihiro gender discourse was seeing someone's tumblr dni saying "dni if you use he/him for Chihiro" and being very confused about why people were headcanoning Chihiro from Spirited Away as transmasc. Honestly wish I hadn't figured out who they were talking about, I got so excited for canon trans girl Chihiro only for that to not be the case 💀
I found this comment on a rewatch and still didn't remember there was a Chihiro other than the one from Spirited Away lol
(Sidenote: my phone tried to correct 'Chihiro' to 'chirp' and I think that's funny)
were they talking about chihiro fujisaki from danganronpa? (rewatching this vid)
@@eliissmellyy yeah it's the Danganronpa Chihiro
@@sarahblack9333 Chihiro is a fairly common japanese name IIRC, so it could be any number of characters.
@@naikigutierrez4279 chihiro from danganronpa has a funky plot line that makes it pretty likely that it’s him
Because he pretends to be a girl because people bullied him for being weak
It wasn’t really handled well in canon.
Honestly I think trans man chihiro makes more sense than trans woman chihiro in danganronpa. That’s just me though.
This reminds me of my time in the Detroit: Become Human fandom. We were given like 2 non-verbal seconds of a character (RK900) and before long we had pretty much collectively decided on his personality and there were TONS of fics shipping him with various characters (Reed900 for life). This character didn't even exist in some playthroughs of the game if memory serves, like you had to get certain endings to even discover that he was a thing. And then all he did was stare. For literally 2 seconds. And said nothing. What was especially funny to me is that everyone ran with the idea of him being taller than the main character, Connor, even though they were very nearly the same model of android and there was zero height difference. Ahhh, I miss that fandom.
LMAO this ship is now one of the most prevalent parts of the whole fandom, the characters of RK900 and Gavin Reed are now fully fleshed characters with high quality fan-films about them. it truly is a strange phenomenon lol
@@elynotarobot3813 YEAH HAHAH I haven’t watched the big fan movie made about them yet but I want to 😂 my RK900 fic in AO3 is still my most popular fic on my whole account, I love it
Don’t forget the fandom collectively naming RK900 Conrad. Or giving the Connor clones different names and personalities and making them all brothers.
@@mishiwishu7823 Conrad?? When I was in the fandom everyone was calling him Nines
this was in my brain the entire video!! it really says a lot that the entirely made up pairing Reed900 is the second most popular ship in my bookmarks (but who doesn't love two assholes joining together to find love?)
Fun fact: 'Macavity' from 'Cats' is clearly referencing Moriarty. He's the criminal mastermind and the description of him in the poem and song fits with Moriarty's description in the story.
So Moriarty is canonically described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a cat boy? Fascinating
@@emclaire7027 No, as tall, thin, ginger, greying and going bald, and with a bowed back. In the poem, Macavity gets a similar description.
They both are also referred to as "the Napoleon of Crime", iirc. There were zero attempts at subtlety. Macavity is Moriarty's fursona and nobody can convince me otherwise.
In a roundabout way, this makes me wonder about the existence of Les Mis in the Sherlock universe. Cats obviously could not exist in the same form, because Macavity is a blatant reference to Moriarty. If Cats didn't exist at all, would Cameron Mackintosh have still had the success and clout to produce Les Mis 4 years later?
Obviously it _does_ exist in the Sherlock universe, Mycroft evidently pissed off the front of house staff by being on his phone in the auditorium, but _should_ it exist?
@@Seal0626 I'm not sure whether Cats would exist in the Sherlock universe.
In the Sherlock universe, T.S. Elliot would not have had Doyle's canon to base his Macavity upon, as Sherlock Holmes would not have existed that early. There might be a collection of poems about cats, but the poem about Macavity would not be a reference to Moriarty. Thus, Cats would be a different musical if it existed. It might have been turned into a movie or not.
Les Mis is not bound to the existences of Doyle's stories, so as long as Victor Hugo existed, Les Mis can have been written that way and can have become both a musical and a movie as in our reality.
One thing that I love about your content is, that you still celebrate beeing invested in these Storys and fandoms. Often beeing a fangirl or shipper or consuming fanfiction and loving it is rediculed or labled as cringe. I don't have the words for this but it means a lot to seeing someone embrace their teen obsessions instead of condemning them.
This whole thing reminds me of that time the Danny Phantom fandom took a background character that was on screen for maybe 2 seconds and gave him a name, a backstory, a personality, a role in the narrative, dynamics with the main characters, 2 brothers, a dad, etc. He ended up being characterized as something of a conspiracy theorist who was the only person in Amity Park that understood that Danny was Phantom, but no one believed him, so he develops this mostly one-sided hatred for Danny as he tries to prove somehow that Danny and Phantom are the same person. It wasn't for shipping purposes, people were just having fun making a more compelling antagonist than Butch Hartman could ever write. We stan Wes Weston
I don’t know how best to describe it at the moment, but I must say that you are the uncontested QUEEN of this strange sort of fandom anthropology, and that I hope that it gives you as much joy to create as it gives me to listen to.
Additionally: You think the Mormor shippers are fans of Moriarty the Patriot?
It’s videos like this, specifically describing how they decided everything about this character, that just makes me so happy that fandom culture is a thing. It’s rare, very very rare.
I feel like this could be called "how religions form" and still be 100% still spot on
Religion and Fanbases work essentially the same way in their core after all, religion is just a more serious larger scale form of fanbase in many ways.
I would go further and postulate that the internal episode premise is directly "how religions form" and then they decided to tell that story through a lens they have experience with.
"We can make a religion out of this!"
Me and Madoka Magica.
I will be referring to the issues of the Great Schism as ‘head canons’ from now on.
The draw of a hot villain in a suit cannot be overstated
love sarah's delivery of the entire dbz fandom bit, you could tell there was no gears turning behind the eyes, she was reading off the script in her mind and had no prior knowledge to inform it. absolutely amazing 10/10
the sherlock fandom creating a character honestly reminds me of the Marauders fandom (of Harry Potter, like Sirius and all that), I'm not part of it but there's this really big fanfic they all love-All The Young Dudes- and I swear they have all created at least like four new characters and collectively they have all decided they just exist. It's kind of cool because quite a few of them are like POC and LGBTQ+ but it's just so strange as it's just fanmade.
I watched a marauders cosplay livestream once and a lot of the comments asked sirius "do you know Grant Chapman?" (One of the main OCs from all the young dudes) and it felt really weird because Grant is literally just from this one fic. Not all fanworks have to be set in the same universe. It was a *marauders* cosplay livestream, not an *all the young dudes* cosplay livestream. I personally like all the young dudes as a standalone story, but I don't worship it as universal marauders canon.
@@really-quite-exhausted Yeah, there was just so much of it around like I assumed that was like the main one.
this is exactly what i thought of! and the fact that the fandom has just all collectively agreed on the fancasts for the marauders and they haven't changed since tumblr 2014 lmao. I've seen people say their favourite characters from harry potter are ones that don't even exist in the universe (eg grant chapman from atyd). i honestly sometimes forget these things arent in the original story
It’s too bad those fanworks are supporting a TERF.
One of my recent fav fanon’s is just that Dean Winchester isn’t dead/completely ignoring the spn finale. They killed him and so many people just said no
We all should have just skipped the final episode. The penultimate episode really should have been the last.
One of my favorite fandom canons is that Stiles Stilinski's dad (Teen Wolf) was named John. He was only ever called Sheriff or simply Stilinski in the show, and fanfiction authors needed a proper name. It was universally agreed to be John, and when his actual name was revealed to be Noah in season 6 at the very least the majority of authors took one look at the name and said nah.
Second favorite is definitely the Harry Potter fandom having its own tag on ao3 declaring a fic would be ignoring the heavily disliked epilogue of book 7.
On the second point, I also love that said tag is used so often it's been made into an acronym
My personal favourite Fanon is Literally the entire King Arthur mythos. What a plot people have come up with based on a couple lines in a 1000+ year old history book. And people are probably even more judgy about it than that Mormor person.
le morte d'arthur is not a few lines its a 700 chapter book
@@captainstabbin5374 I think Chaz is more refering to how some parts of the King Arthur mythos itself was just a few sentences or paragraphs, but have been enlargened into its significance as a sort of of Fannon while lots of other parts have remained fairly dormant.
Lancelot, the super cool French knight who bangs King Arthur's wife, was originally added by a French writer. How about that.
@@wadespencer3623
Sounds like a self-insert who got himself canonized, something none of us can ever hope to achieve in our own lifetimes.
@@captainstabbin5374 I think they're referring to Historia Regum Brittaniae, a semi-historical account of the kings of Britain which is the first extant document to mention King Arthur.
Sarah: "It wasn't until the third game: Kingdom Hearts 2..."
Me(a KH fan): "Oh right. Kingdom Hearts is that kind of series."
How dare you imply Kingdom Hearts has weird game titles! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to playing "Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage" on the compilation "Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue"
Brian David Gilbert warned me about you people...
I'm not involved in any fandoms, I've never had a tumblr, and I stopped watching Supernatural like a decade ago. But I still physically recoiled when you said "Cas" is canonically spelt with two Ss.
I still remember when they first spelled out "Cass" in one of the episode promos... I was still in the fandom on tumblr at the time, and every single person I followed was viscerally uncomfortable and refused to change from Cas
I've never watched Supernatural, so I shouldn't really have an opinion, *and* also I'm not really a prescriptivist... But I have a slight dog in this fight because the contraction of my name is very similar.
"Cas" would usually be pronounced /kæz/ to rhyme with "as", while "Cass" would be pronounced /kæs/ to rhyme with "sass"
@@voland6846, eh. English is rarely consistent. And seeing as his name is Castiel, I think it's understandable that people would shorten it to "Cas" without adding an extra letter.
@@Sandreline Like I say, I'm not a prescriptivist, if "Cas" is what the community decided it is, then that's what it is!
In the vein of “Fanon as course correction” I think one that’s hilarious is the Magnus Archives spelling of the main character “Jon/John”.
The author (Jonathan Sims or Jonny) named the main character after himself (rip), he wanted to distinguish the character from the person in some way. So the official name is “John”. It’s in the transcripts, the wiki, etc. But the fandom collectively decided, “No, it’s Jon.” and ran with it.
But this lead to the hilarious side effect that newcomers to the fandom knew that “One of the Jon’s is supposed to have an H in it” saw that the entire fandom called the main character “Jon”, so they would then misspell the *author’s* name as “Johnny”.
The Magnus Archives fandom is also a fascinating look at consistency in fanon and characterization across a large number of people, especially where the main characters are concerned. Additionally, because it’s a podcast where the author chose to not describe the main characters appearances beyond details like “looks really tired”, all the main characters appearances were up to interpretation. But Jon’s appearance in particular was so consistent that I had to look through the wiki to see if him being from the Middle East or something was canon. It’s not. Same thing with him being nonbinary, and Martin being trans. Also not canon. But if you took a brief look through fandom circles it appears so often you’d be convinced that there was some sort of text behind it. It’s really fascinating!
I still remember when promotional material for Disney's Encanto came out and the TMA fandom took one look at Bruno and shouted THAT'S JON without even needing to consult each other
@@a.c.1839we don’t talk about Bruno, no, no, we gouge our own eyes out so as to escape from the grip of Bruno