it occurs to me that the reason why people don’t venture outside YA or mainstream entertainment (e.g. marvel, disney, popular children’s tv, etc.) is bc beyond the media created primarily for mass consumption, it’s difficult for fans & audiences to break into and grow attached to narratives that resist commodification and superficial engagement. like the reason why people put fanfiction up on a pedestal and read only YA romance or fantasy and love the new loki show is bc they demand very little from you as a viewer / reader. they don’t ask for your participation in the creation of meaning within the story, they don’t require you to look deeper, probe further, in order to unlock inwoven layers of meaning & significance. they just give you characters you can divorce from the context of the narrative and fictional universe, tropes to latch onto and take out of context, imagery & iconography to replicate and reproduce so that you do their marketing for them, and commodified narratives and archetypes that say nothing and do nothing but make it easy for people to project their own fantasies and desires and expectations onto. that’s what it comes down to