Detective Pikachu
Jun. 2nd, 2019 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThis is a story about a guy who bullied me in college for writing fanfiction.
During college I put together a ton of scholarships and got to spend a year in Japan at a study abroad program, where I ended up in a relationship with a guy who went to a different school. It wasn’t a healthy relationship, but I was young and stupid and genuinely believed that I could fix things if only I could become a better person, which mostly entailed never saying anything when my feelings were hurt.
I worked three jobs during my senior year of college (on top of a full courseload, a senior thesis, and the grad school application process, fun times) in order to be able to fly to go see this boy at his university. I couldn’t afford a hotel room, so I would stay in his dorm, where he lived in a suite with two other boys.
One of these boys was really funny and smart and outgoing and talented, but he was also vaguely misogynistic in a way that young men at fancy colleges can be sometimes. He considered himself to be a writer, and one of his favorite topics to discuss when I was visiting seemed to be how much he hated fanfiction. Like, what’s more sad and pathetic, furries or the disgusting people who are too dumb to write anything other than fanfiction? Haha.
My charming boyfriend later told me that this guy knew that I wrote Pokémon fanfiction, and that he would sometimes perform readings from my LiveJournal in front of an audience for shits and giggles.
I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that this guy had a giant dildo suction-cupped to the wall above the television set in the dorm suite’s common room. The dildo’s name was "Dick Rambone." More than once I found myself sitting on the common room couch and slowly dying inside as this guy addressed his diatribes against fanfiction to Dick Rambone, as the dildo above the tv was presumably familiar with how horny and gross women and gay men are. Especially people who write Pokémon fanfiction, how sick is that?
So this is one of the guys who wrote the story and script for Detective Pikachu.
........
I actually discuss this in my book, how fanwork by women is often treated as amateurish and embarrassing while the exact same work done by men gets turned into Hollywood movies.
It’s weird – it’s so goddamn weird – that this ended up hitting so close to home.
During college I put together a ton of scholarships and got to spend a year in Japan at a study abroad program, where I ended up in a relationship with a guy who went to a different school. It wasn’t a healthy relationship, but I was young and stupid and genuinely believed that I could fix things if only I could become a better person, which mostly entailed never saying anything when my feelings were hurt.
I worked three jobs during my senior year of college (on top of a full courseload, a senior thesis, and the grad school application process, fun times) in order to be able to fly to go see this boy at his university. I couldn’t afford a hotel room, so I would stay in his dorm, where he lived in a suite with two other boys.
One of these boys was really funny and smart and outgoing and talented, but he was also vaguely misogynistic in a way that young men at fancy colleges can be sometimes. He considered himself to be a writer, and one of his favorite topics to discuss when I was visiting seemed to be how much he hated fanfiction. Like, what’s more sad and pathetic, furries or the disgusting people who are too dumb to write anything other than fanfiction? Haha.
My charming boyfriend later told me that this guy knew that I wrote Pokémon fanfiction, and that he would sometimes perform readings from my LiveJournal in front of an audience for shits and giggles.
I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that this guy had a giant dildo suction-cupped to the wall above the television set in the dorm suite’s common room. The dildo’s name was "Dick Rambone." More than once I found myself sitting on the common room couch and slowly dying inside as this guy addressed his diatribes against fanfiction to Dick Rambone, as the dildo above the tv was presumably familiar with how horny and gross women and gay men are. Especially people who write Pokémon fanfiction, how sick is that?
So this is one of the guys who wrote the story and script for Detective Pikachu.
........
I actually discuss this in my book, how fanwork by women is often treated as amateurish and embarrassing while the exact same work done by men gets turned into Hollywood movies.
It’s weird – it’s so goddamn weird – that this ended up hitting so close to home.
