Fucking fans.

I have problems with fandom, I've mentioned this before but it sorta came up again today, on my Facebook feed people have been sharing a long, ugly comic featuring Bart Simpson, the son from Family Guy who's name I forget, and Bobby from King of the Hill, in this comic Bart and the Family Guy kid are apparently gay and a couple and are also having relationship problems, Bobby is their therapist. They talk through some basic communication skills and learn some things about abusive relationships.

The lessons here are fine, that I am not complaining about, what bugs me is that there is apparently a fairly large group of people who can't internalize these lessons without being taught them by popular cartoon characters, not only that, but characters who, in this context, are so divorced from their origins that the only way we know who they are is the art is just good enough to make them recognizable.

Harry Potter fans seem to do this too, every couple of days someone links me to some piece of headcannon that does this.( for those who don't know, headcannon is not a head mounted gun, it is a piece of fiction regarding an established work created by someone with no connection to the original that they now view, in their own mind, as what really happened)

"In my headcannon Harry starts a clinic for sexual assault survivors", "Neville is totally spending the rest of his days reforming the mental health system in exactly this particular way", "Hermione basically becomes Emma Watson."

It's just so baffling, they are all fine things to do but there is literally no indication that these particular characters will do those things, and why would they? The story ended, I get that people have causes and like to push them whenever they can, but if the only way you can react to something is through the lens of pop culture characters then there is something wrong here.

There are loads of real people who can inspire about these topics, to ignore them in favor of characters from whatever bit of fiction you want to tie into it is lunacy, and kind of offensive, these causes are real, there are real works and people dedicated to them, the fact that some people can't seem to deal with them except through the buffer of friendly pieces of pop culture is dumb as hell.

I leave you with one last example, possibly fake, I have not researched it in depth, but it's been around for a while and basically epitomizes the issue as I see it.

Fucking fans man, and My Little Pony fans are just the worst.