kdsburneraccount

 I have been thinking about the past. (I know, bad sign) Mostly about interactions I have had with people in the past, and how people have nuances to them. One can be capable of being aware of their white privilege in a fandom but also be an asshole to people. And also a hypocrite about some of the things they espouse. But also acknowledge that shortcoming. But also not act on courtesy. It's a whole thing. Yes this is about what I was alluding to in a post that I recently updated. Like I feel a little bad, but then remember I really did not do much, other people were hurt worse, and being kind of right about things like fandom racism does not mean they are exempt from that behavior.

I think it is pretty frustrating to go looking for academic papers about racism in sports fandom and not finding a lot because of the nature of 1. sports fandom being insular in a conventional "fandom" context and 2. academia also being white and 3. fandom academia really not talking about race? But yeah I was reading a paper about Sports RPF fandom and it was by (yes) a white woman who was (yes) in Hockey and F1 RPF fandom. Straw in haystack, fork in kitchen. (Link)

Anyways I read the paper, it was alright. I raised my eyebrows at the proposal of fandom being a "quasi-utopia" for non-white male fans before reading the paper and seeing that they clarified their stance that it was relative to irl sports. Like alright... that I can agree with. I dunno, it had some good points about how RPF is usually said to be aggressively fictional, but also being "realistic" is a sign of good research, which leads to a bit of a slippery slope. Also saying that slash fic is more "homoindifferent" than homophobic and serves as a way for mostly female fans to bond, especially since a lot of writers inject themselves into the male characters. Yeah. There were some good points that I was aware of but never could put into words as eloquently. This is why they get published in academic journals and I don't!

It did make me think about the possibility of writing and academic paper and getting that published. That would be cool! But maybe somewhere way down the line, when I can have more time to dabble with writing formally and not worry about being inexperienced. Gather research information, and whatnot. I dunno, I think it's cool to have papers to refer to other, older papers. At the same time it can become a bit of a perpetuation of some ideas, and also the whiteness of academia can lead to the perspective being kind of narrow, especially since the fandoms that I'm in are predominantly about people of color. 

I had a doc I started working on a few years ago trying to answer the question of why Hockey RPF was more popular than literally any other North American sport RPF. Most of my sources literally being Tumblr, the occasional Reddit post, whatever LiveJournal posts I could find. Not very professional, but a lot of academic papers are kind of hard to find online and I guess you could consider it research in the sense of interviews or something. (I did end up having a correspondence with someone who could be considered a known figure in fandom? But yeah)

It is fascinating to see people be willfully obtuse about the popularity of Hockey RPF by claiming that it's "physical" and "exciting to watch" as though that is only unique to the sport of hockey. Especially when looking at how NFL fandoms then and now were quite often centered on the white men in the league. Like- okay. We can start at the very beginning with the concept of "migratory slash fandom," which is apparently how a decent subset of early hockey fans got into hockey. Because apparently a lot of them were based in the Midwest and Chicago and Pittsburgh were cooking at the time, and I guess they needed to get away from bandom. Apparently. We should probably inquire why they decided to gravitate towards hockey of all sports (and yeah there has been a lot said about the subconscious bias to whiteness in migratory slash fandom). So I mean. I think it's kind of obvious. At some point it's a bit of a feedback loop where the big fandom keeps churning fic and more people are drawn in by the fic and continue contributing. But also people are drawn to whiteness in fandom.

Not to generalize fandoms (I will now generalize) but I guess it is interesting to see demographics of fandoms depending on the site. Hockey Twitter has the reputation of largely being white. NBA/NFL Twitter are seen as more "black," but there are probably some edgy white teens on there. Baseball has a bit of both, though it has the largest boomer population from my observation. I will say that the NFL fandom has received an influx of Taylor Swift fans (see the large amount of Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift fic posted to AO3 in the past year), but that hasn't really muddled "NFL Twitter" and the effect is more on Tumblr-fandom adjacent spaces. And making that just a little more Hockey RPF fandom-adjacent. 

But again, maybe it's the whole "oh those sports are seen a certain way by non-sport fans so it's harder to get into" but also the blackness of both sports can be seen as a contributing factor to why some would be hesitant to get into those sports. Not to defend the NFL and its handling of CTE. But hockey also has that problem. And I don't really see people angrily demanding the NHL to fix it. I think the blackness of the NFL is kind of a factor in that, though, because hockey players are predominantly white and grew up well-off enough to afford playing hockey? It's the whole black narrative of "making it out the hood," I guess, which can feed into some pretty negative stereotypes about black people. 

But you do see Swifties becoming NFL fans because their favorite singer is now at games. So I dunno! I don't think certain sports are hard to get into, even if some fans are like "eww that's for boys!!" (And of course this feeds into some whiteness in the fandom which isn't necessarily bad but when the league is 54% black it gets awkward to see only one black person in the top 10 most tagged characters. And it's mostly because of their relationship with a white character. I think there is a lot that can be said about how some interracial relationships are presented. However, I don't know if I'm authorized to speak on that. We will proceed. I might come back to this thought.)

I guess you can also kind of see this in the rise of popularity of women's basketball? Though I go in that tag and it is... very white. Yeesh. Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers are doing what Joe Burrow did for the NFL fandom. It is something. 

 Recently been thinking about how team sports are kind of like boy bands in the sense that you have a bunch of young (I guess) men all grouped together and made for perform in some way. Their masculinity is often scrutinized, especially on social media, and there are parasocial relationships created between fans and said performers. Admittedly, the demographics are different, but there are similarities. Oftentimes both boy band members and athletes are in advertisements. Their looks are scrutinized. Both are signed to contracts based on their performance, and if the performance is not met oftentimes they cannot have a career. So on and so forth.

I noticed that some sports tumblr fans had a kpop phase, or still were in kpop fandom, and it did make me think about the parallels between a boyband and a sports team. There are interpersonal dynamics involved, for sure, and those are often recorded by social media interns to foster goodwill in parasocial relationships. Or at least let fans get the feeling that they are getting to know the celebrity better.

I came across this thing called "bleak boyband bingo" while I was scrolling through a Hockey RPF blog. According to their carrd it was meant to summarize some shitty experiences of boyband life, and then came to summarize the general kpop idol experience. In the Hockey RPF blog, they modified it more to be about relationships, so I looked at the original bingo and found it to have a lot of interesting parallels to sports.

(A rundown, now)

Capitalism induced "found" family - I mean. Sports teams are built to be as good as possible. Whatever themes of male on male camaraderie are espoused in a sports team's social media do have the underlying message of "we need to win games." And that is sort of tied to capitalism because if a team is bad then how will it sell tickets... 

Things that don't need much elaboration: age vs talent hierarchies, mixed talent levels, toxic rivalry, clout chasing friends from back home, intricate rituals to touch the skin of other men, inflated ego due to being smartest of the illiterates, members leaving and group continuing, last minute addition to group. 

There's probably more, but I'm lazy. I might be generalizing but this reminds me of a Tumblr post I read about the state of Hockey RPF where op was talking about how "old school hrpf" wouldn't be afraid to go into the darker side of what being famous was like. Personally, I think a lot of fic is written just to have a nice little romance story in it. But I will admit that exploring the themes of the consequences of fame is pretty interesting. (Warning, generalization: I think some older fandom folk yearn for the early 2000s LiveJournal fic with internalized homophobia. At the same time, someone did point out that there is an undercurrent of misogyny in a lot of early Hockey RPF. So I dunno. I'm not super well versed in Hockey RPF, but that is the sports fandom with the most documented history.) Stuff like toxic masculinity can be explored in both boyband and sports fic, and yeah. 

Hello hello I am back (beating the dead horse that is my Falcons fanfic I posted two years ago) (being in China will not stop me from being annoying about it I fear)

Not sure I have much to say about this fic that I haven’t covered last year. So I’ll look at the write-up I did last year to amend aspects of it, as a meta of the meta, or something. Not gonna add a lot bc honestly I think I was pretty thorough last year, so yeah.

Here’s what I wrote last year, with comments from some people I felt comfortable sharing the document at the time: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1isQQjksBSPvhRY-F6eIbjLL5VLmA2ZPP3a5JV24nrvw/edit

I think I’m more comfortable now with getting weird with it on main, or at least like sharing more stuff I used to hold to myself. Which is weird coming from someone who has posted explicit fanfiction under their account but I digress. Anyways, the commentary on the commentary:

I do still maintain that the fic is pretty distinct; the premise stands out for sure, and it’s a sufficient length to flesh out things. Still don’t know what else I would’ve titled the fic besides what I picked, though I still think there could’ve been a better title. However, it is too late at this point, so it is what it is.

Maybe I should delve into my Matt/Julio fascination… I mean it all started with this lovely article by the Falcoholic. I thought Matt Ryan seemed like a cool guy, so I read some stuff about him and the Falcons and then fell into the narrative. The rest is documented in my direct messages with my good friend on Discord, back in… oh gosh, December of 2020. Actually kind of insane I have shipped this for that long.

I wasn’t even the first one to write for this pairing, because there was a Wattpad fic with this ship (and the fic was from… 2017? 2018? May have been even earlier, actually). Unfortunately, it was deleted and I didn’t archive it. I do still have a link but at this point it’s probably useless. Anyway, the fic was titled “Fairy Tale” and featured Matt as the somewhat silly prince of some kingdom and Julio as one of the guards of the kingdom. Matt is in an arranged marriage to someone and is in love with Julio, but Julio is married and has a family. Matt then gets killed for some reason. I think because he does something really dumb and doesn’t want to live anymore. It’s been a while since I’ve read, but yeah. Even then people knew Matt/Julio had to be sad and unrequited 😭 like man. One day I WILL write something happy about them.

But yeah, I may have been the first person to post hanahaki disease to the NFL tag. Shoutout Hockey RPF, and a bunch of other fandoms I’ve seen with that premise. 

The beginning is still alright. I sometimes write dual POVs in a story because it’s interesting to me, so here it kind of establishes a prologue-ish vibe and probably dramatic irony. The jump to Julio’s perspective felt a little bit jarring when I was rereading but in the overall flow of the story it’s probably okay.

I still like the line about Matt’s teeth being “neat and straight and white” I fear… like yes it’s on the nose but only in fanfic will you have characters making such astute observations about another person’s features. Would reword some other stuff about his appearance though.

There’s some good moments in the parts where Matt and Julio spend time reading over the playbook (courtesy of articles from that time detailing the fact they were interacting like that). Definitely could’ve added a moment or two where Julio gets a thought about Matt, but I thought that might’ve been too fast to develop the attraction (irony bc this is fanFICTION. But Julio seems the type to develop his feelings slowly). Also I wasn’t sure how to write about Matt being attractive in a way that would be not cringy. However, I have now accepted cringe so it’s fine. We move. I have developed in my writing abilities.

I was like 12 when I wrote this (not actually) so honestly the thought of them having sex was not in my head. And also the friend I gifted the fic to was younger than me so it would’ve been weird to include as a present. Unfortunately the friend is inactive online now 😔 I miss talking to them but we move actually. If you look at this without considering context you could say Julio being new to the feeling of being in love makes sense because of his upbringing (football is life, needed to think about things other than romance because his mom had to work multiple jobs to provide for his athletic and he wanted to stay out of trouble). And then along comes this slightly older quarterback who’s nice and makes Julio feel like he can spend a while on this team and… yeah. If I wrote this today I would probably get into the more unhinged aspects of pining but here it’s fairly straightforward pining. Like I think on one hand the suffering might be too much, considering these are grown men. At the same time, the angst is good! I guess it’s about the balance between making something horribly depressing and going overboard.

The “does he know” excerpt… I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old actually. I am so sorry.

Okay mention of ethics of RPF and non-famous family members… in my opinion it’s fine to include non-famous family members. People know it’s fictional, for the most part. And also what exactly is the extent of non-famous, because if you are including the wife of an athlete, then that individual has probably been subject to some publicity. I guess wives don’t really count when they talk about “non-famous”… when it comes to wives/real life partners being involved in fanfic I really don’t care in the grand scheme of things. Me personally reading something with infidelity is a no go but fic is a space to explore some topics and if you wanna do that… more power to you! I won’t let my personal opinions on the matter stop it. You can definitely write a good fic that can delve into the headspace of a person without having to include family. However in my opinion upbringing informs character and if you want to explore some topics you are bound to rpf-ify some family members. Maybe it’s a skill issue for me, but I think when ur subjecting public figures to various wild fantasies having a family member be some side character is pretty whatever. RPF is a fandom space so the subject of RPF being exposed to it is sort of on them. I’m pretty lax when it comes to RPF etiquette so honestly people can do whatever as long as they’re not sending it to the subjects. And if you’re uncomfortable at the idea of them seeing it, then lock it. 

Anyways where was I… oh yeah Julio and his relationship with his mom, because his dad wasn’t present in his life. Aka the thing that centralizes my headcanon that he may have daddy issues. My way of rationalizing why he would like Matt, besides the general pleasantness. One of those things I would probably elaborate on if I wrote the story today 🤔  as well as exploring some intersections between growing up in a primarily black community with certain ideas of masculinity, and how being gay conflicts with those ideas. But at the same time, I do worry that I do not have the sufficient level of nuance to write it well. Fanfic doesn’t have to be that deep, I think I read too much into what I write and make things too complicated for myself.

If I liked cards more I could’ve probably expanded on the whole thing where Julio plays cards with Matt. Like form some more interactions that make me go “okay, there is a bond.” I may be reading too deeply into fanfic again, at the end of the day if the grammar and plot are decent then most people will like it.

2012 NFC Championship Game scene where Matt asks Julio if he’s seeing anyone still eats actually… like man (pats self on the back). Hospital scene that got cut out… I think I worried this would come across too like, sad for the sake of being sad. Kind of like “A Little Life,” or something. Me and the conflict of not wanting to make the grown athletes come across too pathetic for wallowing in their emotions. Common theme in my current works in progress, actually. Probably best to ignore those doubts and go all out with the dramatics. Like we all know the players wouldn’t actually act like this but it’s fun to imagine.

Anyways yeah Matt is kinda there I guess. Sorry dad, you are the cause of all this emotional damage but you are so unaware of it. Not your fault! But man. I don’t think I would be able to handle Matt having feelings for Julio here because he’s married and it wouldn’t be fair to Julio literally getting sick over him. For a second I thought about Matt having hanahaki but eh… I think this is fine. 

I think this is about it, in terms of stuff on my mind. I will try to update my Dreamwidth more often in 2024, or at least write more entries I’m comfortable with making public. Thank you to whoever is reading this!