2025 — Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 3
Challenge #3
In your own space, talk about a fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
I think the opinion that has changed the most, honestly, has been my ability to watch shows like My Hero Academia and the like without going "why are they making children do this oh my god." As a teacher myself, it's harder and harder for me to accept that young children (you know the age, the fifteen to nineteen years-old protagonists) just have to save the world and there's not a thing the adults and mature people around them can do except cheer them on. Rewatching Bleach (or trying to) or Fullmetal Alchemist I'm constantly yelling at the television "He's a CHILD! You can't expect a child to do XYZ!" Anyway.
It's a fairly tame one, I suppose. I can't think of any other major opinion I have that has drastically changed, just gained nuance over the years. Some examples I can think of:
- I've always preferred m/m ships over f/f ships. Now, with years of experience, I've identified my dislike was because most fandoms have little development of female characters and especially few connections between female characters and other characters in general, while giving men huge backstories, so it was easier for me to see connections between the men than women. I still don't always enjoy f/f ships, but good fanfic authors give me the connections and development I'm looking for and I no longer actively ignore f/f ships.
- I've always believed Tony Stark to be right in Civil War, and while that hasn't changed, I've softened my stance on how angry I was at Steve Rogers' side. I don't agree with him at all, still, but I'm less inclined to want to see him grovel in stories lol
- I've never tied authors to their work — i.e., when Joanne Kathleen wrote the HP series, I never really cared about them personally, just enjoyed playing in the world they created (especially when it was so poorly written that nothing was well-explained, giving me huge freedom to do my favorite thing: world-building). So when they came out as transphobic, and when I found a whole list of actors and writers who refused to support palestine — or actively worked to support israhell — it didn't detract from my ability to turn their work into something I can continue writing about, even if I don't engage with their new movies.
- I've never enjoyed the propaganda slant of Marvel (it's why I liked Iron Man movies, they were all about the main character messing up and realizing it was his own people and flaws that made his problems, not some outside ooOooO scary terrorist) and what with the blatant cash grabbing of Disney and the terrible, terrible character of Sabra in the new Captain America movie, I'm just happy I divorced from caring about Marvel when I did, which was at Endgame with the terrible plot and writing. I tried to get into the Marvel series (I had loved Agent Carter when it came out) and started Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but it just seemed empty, and I watched the Kamala Khan series but it was... more than a little disappointing, from a Muslim perspective.
I honestly can't think of any other big opinions I have in fandom beyond, like, preferences and ignoring certain parts of canon to keep writing, or the like. And overall, growing older has only really enhanced my understanding of why I hate or dislike ABC.