PlusHeart Issue #27 - The fandom housing crisis

How do you find your tribe? How is that constructed by creators?

PlusHeart is a look at communities, Twitch, esports and the online creative industry. It’s written by Matt Demers, who’s obsessed with those connections.

This issue was supposed to invoke more of an "apex predator" vibe, but I had a bit of a tangent in my brain while planning it out and I felt that I could add more to it.

Fandom takes a bit of a shift in your perception once your recognize that fragmentation within a property is something that brands are using incredibly often these days. It goes a little like this:

• A brand will include a number of factions, "houses", or groups within their worldbuilding 

• Those groups have their own dedicated colours, logos and personalities. They're often straightforward, and can be separated along cultural or practical lines; in most cases, the personalities and interests will clash or ally with other groups.

• The protagonists will be encouraged to interact with those groups. Different characters from said groups will serve as companions, or others will serve as enemies.

The idea behind this is that these groups enable fans to self-sort into different factions of fans, each attached to a smaller fiefdom within the bigger kingdom. This allows for the varying clashes of tastes or interests, but doesn't let those fans escape the fandom; to a brand or company, this is important, since they want to be able to still take advantage of the volume of their audience, without having to deal with playing favourites during inter-fandom fighting.

The mention of the conflict is important, mostly because the idea of Fandom Housing developed after fans divided themselves along the boundaries of which characters they wanted to see have the most screentime, or which romantic option they wanted people to end up with (Team Jacob vs Team Edward, etc).

This is probably most literal with the Harry Potter franchise, as each person reading the books will have interest in one of the four "houses" of the Hogwarts setting. I first noticed this phenomenon prominently in the Homestuck fandom on Tumblr, since that story had twelve different castes, each associated with a colour, blood type, and set of associated emotions.

Homestuck trolls, with associated zodiac symbols, colours, etc. Via PunPunichu on DeviantArt.

Because of those twelve sub-groups, you had twelve versions of merchandise to sell, and then twelve different subcultures that are readily-made for fans to sort themselves into.

I don't know if the idea behind this was necessarily malicious, but there's something to say about a creator being able to go "I know my fans are going to want to be hostile, so we might as well make the hostilities beneficial to the overall ecosystem." Being able to distil that tribalism down to a synthetic process with Brave Gryffindor, Cunning Slytherin, Loyal Hufflepuff and Wise Ravenclaw makes it really easy for a prospective fan to "find their people" in the smoothest way possible.

This isn't just a YA Fiction thing; this kind of tribalism can be found in music (boy band member archetypes, anyone?), following streamers (fans of "the [game] streams" that a streamer did) or ensemble casts (like say, Critical Role). The idea is that instead of allowing internal conflicts to alienate certain groups of fans, there are in-built silos that people can find connection in, and then hopefully not cause too many problems.

The issue becomes about validation, and which factions become the apex predators of the fandom. This animal kingdom analogy is what I wanted to start make this post about, but the housing argument felt apt to include.

When a creator validates a certain faction, the others must not breech a threshhold of disappointment. In some cases, the fandom as a whole can just be confident in the creators' vision, and the ability for the product to succeed as a whole: I imagine that K-pop fans recognize that not all members of a group can be stars, and there is a certain dignity to still supporting a less-popular member if the whole is doing well.

This also includes romantic shipping, as some are just doomed from the start (including main character x villain romances); however, the creator is playing a dangerous game if they end up teasing validity of these factions, only to rug-pull at the last moment. This balancing act is where we get into the possible malicious fan-creator relationship, mostly because you start dancing with concepts like queer-baiting (ie, hinting at queer relationships that never become "canon") or just stringing fans along.

Queer-baiting in Supernatural eventually got to the point where they had to address the fan pairing in the actual show (albeit with a lot of asterisks).

I've always used that "squeezing fans like a sponge" metaphor a lot, usually alongside my "bank of goodwill" analogy: normally, people can deal with a creator disappointing "their" faction if the goodwill is high enough, and it's seen as in service to the story.

It becomes murkier when you enter the realms of headcanon and "creator validation" of those headcanons. This usually is accompanied by the increased accessibility that creators have to their audiences in a digital age, and can be a liability. Giving fans too much hope (or giving them more than they should, in order to keep them interested) can become a very cruel feeling for fans who are as attached as they can be.

When media properties end up carrying such weight among fans, things that "feel real" take on a life of their own. I feel like that kind of monster escapes the marketing plans of creators to the point of "oh, huh, who's owning what?" A "fan army" becomes a useful thing, as long as it can be controlled.

Heading back into the "houses", the creators kind of lose ownership in a way, because they ceded that control to give the masses a playground. People have probably met their partners through these fan groups. They buy billboards, host their own events, and (well, in rare cases) develop their own fandoms.

I mostly bring this up because of what I feel is a lapse in the foresight of creators to understand the responsibility they have. It's easy to just say "okay, my property has five ready-built tribes for people to sort into", but there should be this recognition that you're playing god, inside your property and out.

There's a concept of "wanting to get all the benefit without any of the negatives" — the negatives being having to take on this kind of responsibility. It's my cynicism talking, but it feels more productive to encourage people to think critically about the feelings they're falling into, rather than expect any kind of temperance from the people standing to profit.

Housekeeping

I've been dedicating more time to reading lately, and I'm going to be trying to get through two books: The Mindful Way Through Depression and The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem [affiliate links]. I read a decent amount of self-help books, but they tend to be bullshit more often than not; a generally good way of telling is that they're loaded with unprovable anecdotes about hypothetical clients of the writer. It makes the author look more authoratative to have a lot of successes, and that forwards the grift.

However, both of these are generally from academic perspectives, and I always can appreciate a book that seems to address my own skepticism, just as I'm forming it in my brain. I enjoy that humility.

Anyways.

I'll be at a wedding this weekend, so I won't be streaming. We'll be back to playing more Pikmin on Tuesday.

I've also been debating starting my own "running group" for creators; I've been considering it from the perspective of the challenge of building a community for creators that doesn't devolve into endless shilling. I'll let you know how it comes out.

Thanks for reading, as usual. Consider sharing the issue if you like it.