This week, we take a step back from the things we are fans of, to talk about fandom itself. What rights or ownership do we as fans have over the properties we love? What is the interaction between media, and the fan-created things it inspires, such as fan fiction? And why do fan responses to media sometimes turn so horribly toxic?
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The Ethical Panda 
Hmmm, the “men can’t be emotional with each other without fanfic assuming they’re involved” is problematic for me. Mostly because that’s already the case in pretty much ALL media, including the canon wrtiers, for any friendship between a man and a woman – It’s incredibly tedious. You straight blokes get way more on-screen/page friendships between ‘people like you’ than most demographics already.
Woman almost never get good friendships written in genre. Either between then an men or with other women. Frequently because they’re the One Women in the team – in which case they’ll almost certainly be paired off with someone sooner or later. (Romanoff in Age of Ultron springs to mind. Everyone else is having a matey time at Tony’s party – she’s busy getting paired off with Bruce Banner. Argh.)
One of the things in Star Trek Discovery that I loved and was quickly snatched away by the plot events was the relationship between Michael and Philippa at the beginning of the first ep is SUCH a matey, bantery almost stereotypical Star Trek Captain/First officer-ish close friendship trope but with two women. It was lovely and it shouldn’t have been so noticeable as unusual!
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