unpopular fannish opinion: i feel bad about mocking the snapewives

Re-reading SnapeWive wank, for the actualfax first time I felt really uncomfortable with the entire subject matter. Not because it wasn't batshit, but after reading for years in the snark communities--and also existing on this plane of existence--batshit is the rule. I know no non-batshit people. Frankly, the non-batshit seem untrustworthy and smell weird, like eggs. I'm just saying. Granted, this is a level that most of us cannot--no pun intended--dream of ascending to, but still.



It's like the formula for funny now is batshit (higher level) + bad behavior for me to like, enjoy it in a group-like setting or batshit (higher level) + destructive behavior (in private, I enjoy many kinds of batshit. I feel that is okay). Which in a weird and uncomfortable way comes back to irony; if you aren't being ironic, you're doing it wrong, and Snapewiving was just not ironic, ick. Or honestly, a lot of it was the mention of OH NOES SHE HAS KIDS, which, okay, let me say this honestly, most if not all parents have batshit hobbies. I know we privilege birdhouse building over Snapefenning, but I'm going to be honest, I'm not seeing a huge gulf of societal value here. I say this as a crocheter who has done nothing but use up a perfectly good ball of yarn making random and hilarious shapes for the self-amusement value--at least the Snapewives are amusing each other. They are adding fun to the universe that was not there before, where I am only at replacement-level fun and wasting yarn shaped like misshapen penises and once, a cat suffering from radiation poisoning and possibly missing a body. It might have started as a hat? But I'm going with cat.

[Of course, I come from the school of thought that 'serious' does not equal 'not fun'; fun is serious fucking business. We are not immortal and I have like, what, only sixty years left before mortal funtimes are over; that's not all that much time.]

So possibly I'm still smarting from eww fanfic last week being trotted out by actualfax fanfic writers. It's just--it's not even irritating so much as boggling. Anonymeme mockery of too much squee or investment doesn't matter; one of the various uses of anonymous include being a dick, so if that is your fun, go forth and eventually the fun distribution will even out. On the other hand, someone said, straight faced, that all those people (girls) obsessed with TV shows, stars etc are all terrifying!!!! while I thought about it and sure, percentagewise in the general population a few actual crazy-crazy people will take it to the horrifying level, but in general, that's still safer than hanging out with the equivalent fan of sports.

I mean, I don't want to say football, American and not; it's not like that's a mystery. Because in general, media fen don't usually riot through a city--could happen, but you try rioting with a laptop, your internet connection is so unstable, please--or settle a UT versus Oklahoma state with manual testicle removal, which--yeah, I got nothing. But the guy who paints himself blue and white who streaks the field is like, some more meaningful layer of crazy than the chick who married Scott Summers on the astral plane? Cause I didn't see anyone say maybe they need to take away his kids.

If I were speaking in stereotypes, then women totes overinvest in romance and it's unrealistic and dangerous and they could like, mistake it for RL and fuck up their kids if that shit isn't watched and kept goddamn ironic. If I were speaking in stereotypes, then men totes overinvest in romance and it's unrealistic and dangerous and they shoot their love interests to death IRL. I'm not sure, since it doesn't seem to come up a lot, but I'm pretty sure that fucks up the kids more. And also, the woman is dead, but whatever, we're talking about a man and his kids. In most murder cases, I rarely if ever see someone state that someone shouldnt' have access to their kids when they kill their partner; in Snapewives, I saw people worriedly recommend a visit from CPS more than I was comfortable with.

This came up in MsScribe too, actually; the weird thing was, there was a lot of OMG NO SHUT UP at the idea of calling CPS because she was using multiple sockpuppets to play a really fun game of munchausen by internet proxy, but I think the dealbreaker was she was ironic enough about it. It's not even that I think there's a double standard here; I think it's a very consistent standard. MsScribe's actions, though destructive, sometimes personally, were in retrospect clever; she was manipulative and played on stereotyping, and it wasn't like she believed her own sockpuppets were real or something. They were tools for a goal.

Snapewives just think they're married to Snape; that's not clever at all.



I feel like I'm going through some kind of phase of overly critical thought. I really need to work on my irony, y/y?