Hipster ventures into the fandom continent

October 25, 2014 — by Tiffany Zheng

Reporter describes navigating the fandom community on Tumblr, a popular blogging site.

Without even realizing it myself, I’ve been categorized as one of the Nutella-eating, cat-loving and indie-film-watching hipsters on Tumblr. Vintage-obsessed people with an urban nonconformist look, we hipsters cringe at the mainstream culture while “discovering” new bands from our rooms, which are likely adorned with Christmas lights and posters of obscure people.

Tumblr is split into continents, two of them being the hipster-dominated side that my blog falls under and the fandom continent. The fandom community focuses on books, video games, movies, TV shows or celebrities. This “Harry Potter,” “Game of Thrones” and  “Sherlock” mess on Tumblr is populated by fangirls and fanboys, and I basically know nothing about it.

I started my hunt for the fandom community with the caution of a person navigating around wild boars. Tumblr users know that Tumblr isn’t always the best site to look at in a crowded journalism room, especially with the intensity of some fandoms. Whether it be explicit art or creepy obsessive fanfictions, I wasn’t ready to see it.

Not knowing what to expect, I typed in “Harry Potter” only to be bombarded with a flashing gif of Hermione Granger punching Draco Malfoy in the face. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen on Tumblr, and it’s far more hilarious than you’d expect. The rest of the page was clogged with the OTP (One True Pairing) of Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley with movie quotes superimposed over it. To be completely honest, it wasn’t  that different from the infamous hipster love quotes.

I kept scrolling down until lo and behold — in a gif, the cobbed faces of Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Voldemort and Severus Snape bobbled on top of the bodies of four dancing men wearing Speedos. That’s probably an image I could have lived without seeing.

My next stop was “Game of Thrones,” a show I’ve been meaning to start watching. There were the usual gifs of the popular characters and several picture sets of Jon Snow looking lost. What was surprising were several tutorial posts of people helping fans cosplay, or dress up, as characters from the show. The hipster side of Tumblr usually doesn’t give advice like this; instead, we stay in our rooms and eat pastel-colored macaroons.

Moving on to the “Sherlock” tag, I was surprised at the abundant amount of fanart. Most frequently, I was seeing the “JohnLock” ship. A ship is when fans want two characters to be in a romantic relation”ship” and many fans clearly ship Sherlock Holmes and his partner, John Watson. Coming head to head with this ship is “Sherlolly,” or Sherlock and Molly Hooper. Although the fans clearly put effort into the fanart, I’ll never be able to unsee the works of some of the more vehement shippers.

I was impressed by the dedication some of these users have expressed through their art and pictures. Granted, because of what many people have told me about the fandom continent on Tumblr, I had expected to see images that may negatively resonate with me for the rest of eternity, but these fans have created a community of pop culture support.

After venturing into the fandom continent, my verdict is that the boundary between the hipsters and the fandoms is more blurred than most would think. Hipsters reblog song quotes about being sad and cute indie couples, and fangirls and fanboys reblog gifs of their favorite TV quotes and fanart of their OTP’s. Whatever your obsession may be, it’s no doubt that Tumblr is a phenomenon that’ll fuel it.

Maybe I’ll venture over the bridge to the fandom continent another time, but for now, I’m pretty content with my cat gifs, polaroid pictures and mason jar lemonades. 

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