Talking to Liliana this episode really cemented why I find her arguments so utterly uncompelling, because I’m like… so you’re trying to get rid of these powers, which from what I can tell, primarily cause bad dreams and severe boundary problems. They have significantly worse and more destructive effects when exacerbated… which only occurred when the people Liliana is allied with showed up and pushed at them. The solution to getting rid of the powers is, according to her, releasing the unkillable entity that has caused them, except the only effects anyone else on her team thinks releasing it is going to cause is that it will hunt down and eat the gods, with no real definition as to what all falls into the category of “god”, and very little actual evidence as to why that entity will not simply devour the planet as an hors d'oeurve, especially considering there are things that are demonstrably divine on and within the surface of Exandria.
I know we’ve all debated to death what’s wrong with all of the various ideologies here, but Liliana’s opinions in particular are like, girl, you are engaging in a truly astounding and dangerous level of wishful thinking here, and you haven’t managed to get past that in twenty years.
The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain
As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.
This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.
Part one. Fanon.
The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe.
I don’t go here but I feel like “It’s a metaphor. Don’t force it to do the work of a fact.” is a great statement about literature and fan-content in general.
