princeofmorley:

I’m never going to understand the “fandom hive-mind” phenomenon where writers/artists get into this bizarre mindset of thinking their fanworks must adhere to the Fandom-Approved Headcanons that are adopted by the fandom majority or supported by popular fandom creators.

Like…why? Why would you think that?? Why would you let some random people on the internet decide what you’re “allowed” to create?

Headcanon, fanon, meta – they’re just different words for “OPINION.” It’s a hunch. It’s guesswork. Nobody has more “authority” over fandom headcanons than anyone else. There’s no “fandom hierarchy” of fans and archfans and fan cardinals serving the Fan Pope in the Fan Vatican, the Vatifan if you will.

It legitimately disturbs me to see how easily some people will yield to perceived authority, even when there’s no legitimate basis for that authority at all.

A few things that DON’T give a person “authority” over fandom headcanons:

• how many tumblr followers they have
• how many years they’ve been active in the fandom
• how many notes their meta posts have
• how emphatically or confidently they express their opinions
• how many citations they pull from canon to support their argument
• how many times they’ve played/read/watched the source material
• how popular their fanfiction/fanart is
• how many times they’ve interacted with the devs on twitter
• how many other fans agree with them
• anything else you can possibly think of, literally nothing can give a person incontrovertible “fandom authority”

We all played the same dumb video game. We’re all the same dumb brand of garden-variety fans. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

EDIT: I said at the beginning of this post that I’d never understand this phenomenon, but I do. Of course I do. I understand it perfectly.