Parallel to death of the author, I propose the term monofantheism, which is when fans get so enraged at a creator’s refusal to legitimate a particular headcanon that they forget having a plurality of headcanons is the *point* of fandom & declare the creator unfit to keep canon.
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Listen: once upon a time, you couldn't just hit up the creator of your fave thing on twitter and ask them for extra details about the thing they made! And it's super cool that this can happen now - but only when people aren't dicks about it! Which includes both creators AND fans-
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- but not in the way some fans seem to think, where a creator refusing to endorse their fave interpretation - for the simple reason that doing so *sets it above other fan interpretations and alienates fans who feel differently* - is a sign that The Creator Is Hostile To Fandom.
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So now you've got creators trying to engage with fans from all different perspectives on a good faith basis, only there's fans explicitly looking to take any comments they make in *bad* faith, because it's Not The Right Take, and if they didn't get THEIR answer, no one can!
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A common example of this is conflating a brief response made to a single individual with a blanket, all-encompassing take on a related topic. For instance: Creator says they didn't write Character X as gay, therefore Creator is a homophobe! Like I'm just. YOU GUYS.
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Unless that statement is followed up by some Actual Homophobic Bullshit (TM) such as "this sort of character can never be gay" or "being gay is bad", all you're doing is making a deliberately bad faith leap based on a perfectly neutral - and factual! - statement.
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Just. I am So Tired of seeing people wax lyrical about the transformative power of fannish imagination in one breath, and then SCREAMING in the next that If My Ship Isn't Confirmed As Canon Signed In Triplicate The Creators Must Hate All Queer People And Especially Me Personally.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
I generally agree on this, though what about circumstances where a creator has been queerbaiting the audience/readers to attract them to their story but then never follow through? Or even mock the fans for hoping it would become canon?
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Replying to @RFannibal
Queerbaiting & mockery are both dick moves; however, I’ve also seen creators accused of queerbaiting just because *a preferred fan ship* wasn’t canon, even though the work itself contains other canon queer characters, or where network pressure nixed a planned pairing.
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Likewise, it’s not queerbaiting if the fans ship a thing, ask the creators/actors at cons if they support those interpretations, and are told yes - AS FAN INTERPRETATIONS - but without any canon confirmation.
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Replying to @fozmeadows @RFannibal
I also think there needs to be allowance for creators learning and improving over time. Someone who was a dick about shipping in 2009 might have since apologised and demonstrably improved by 2019, and ignoring that growth to hold a grudge is bad faith engagement.
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