fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6961 ]

[ SECRET POST #6961 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6961 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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I will never understand why some people require "relatability" or "connecting with" to enjoy media.
Do you not read stories to get lost within their world? Listen to music because it has a nice beat? Look at drawings to admire the skill? Watch movies for entertainment and to enjoy the SFX/acting? Watch foreign TV series out of curiosity about another culture? Consume media that has low reviews for the "narm charm" or to riff on?
Why does it have to be "me,"me, me, me?" or how you can insert yourself into it?
"I don't relate to this." Skill issue, you don't have to.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Yes, this was inspired by some posts I've seen on F!S and a wider trend I noticed. I had a sheltered upbringing. No childhood friends, my father was very religious and racist. He didn't want me to watch anime or talk to classmates of a different race. Consuming media created by different walks of life saved me from becoming a reactionary evangelical like him. The internet helped me tenfold. We're all human in the end. Even as someone with a narrow range of interests wrt genres/tropes. I'm not going to throw out a good song or movie due to being from another culture.)

It’s not something I do either, I don’t relate to or identify with characters I like, I just like them because I think they’re fun, not because they share an aspect of my personality as if thats the only way I could possibly enjoy a character.

Like I’ve seen meme trend before now that are like ‘your fave characters share a part of you’ and like nope that’s never been me. Most of my fave characters are nothing like me and I enjoy them for that, it would be so boring if I had to find a way to personally connect them to me because jfc would that give me such a limited range of characters I could like.

See, that’s just one version of what “relatability” means. I think plenty of people don’t use it to mean that there’s any specific similarity the share with a character, but that the character is understandable at some level and they can relate to their thoughts or feelings.

Re: Transcript by OP

(Anonymous) - 2026-01-26 23:38 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Transcript by OP

(Anonymous) - 2026-01-27 04:26 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Transcript by OP

(Anonymous) - 2026-01-27 04:00 (UTC) - Expand

I read mostly m/m specifically because as a woman I'm less interested in something I can just go out and experience myself/what I have already experienced. (ntm, the fact I don't exactly do relationships, so I have absolutely no interest in reading about it... this is coming out all wrong, ugh)

I watch/read things predominantly for the characters as well. Setting, world-building and plot are important, but what actually hooks me is interaction between characters. I hate projection, it gets so annoying so fast.

"i'm not able to relate to not being able to relate, so i declare i will never understand and have no interest in exploring this further"

I'm not the only one finding it funny, right?

yeah I noticed that too and got a little chuckle

> Why does it have to be "me,"me, me, me?"

proceeds to tell us their whole backstory

I’m done having conversations about “relatability” when people don’t define what they actually mean.

A story where no one acts in a way you can empathize with or operates on a logic you can understand? Sure, it can be an interesting experience, like decoding something in another language or analyzing a parable for its moral, but it’s often a very emotionally distant one. (And yes, I believe those are both skills you can be better or worse at and skills you can improve on with effort.)

It can also be a symptom of the canon. Plenty of canons out there where characters are nothing but vehicles for something else and have the character depth of puddles so the only things there are to relate to are the extremely basic plot or surface traits. Musicals suffer from this a lot

Right, good point. There are absolutely other ways to enjoy stories, whether it’s for the plots or the music or the visuals or the jokes. And some individual works or whole genres tend towards that side of things.

I completely agree. I can't do emotionally distant arcs. It's not about relating to the characters, it's understanding their motivations.

Serious answer though: this place is for talking about fandom and being in fandom. Plenty of people enjoy experiencing movies and tv and music they can't relate to but probably are not going to look at a movie, think the acting is superb, and then go write fic about it just because the acting is superb when they enjoyed the spectacle but didn't emotionally connect with any characters in it.

That's a really good point. People get into fandom for a pretty specific set of reasons and relatability is probably high for a large percentage.

Yes, but I see "connecting" and "relating" as two different things.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2026-01-27 03:35 (UTC) - Expand

Most people I know don't use "relatable" in fandom to mean "this person/world is exactly like me/mine!" and use it as "this person/world is portrayed in a way that I can understand and relate to on an emotional level, even if their decisions are not ones I would make."

That said, the world is full of narrow-minded people who lack whimsy, so I don't doubt that you've run into them in fandom. If you want to share fandom stuff with them, I recommend pointing them towards the High School AUs.

I have to say, that is not at all how I define 'connect with' when I say it regarding media. When I say I connect with a character, it's not about how much I see of me in them, it's about how much I like them and care about what happens to them. If I don't care about at least one of the characters and want to follow them through the narrative, I'm not going to be engaged in story and yeah, I'm not going to keep going with it.

My uncharitable impression of “relatable” is that people use it to mean “white.”

By "people" do you mean "white people"? lol

IME non-white people use it more often in the opposite way, e.g. an oblivious white boy in an all white small town America who has no concept of other cultures or countries fails to be a relatable hero

(no subject)

feotakahari - 2026-01-27 01:17 (UTC) - Expand

I truly don't understand it either. What I need to be able to enjoy a character is for them to be written in such a way that I can understand why they do the things they do, even if I don't agree with those things. I need them to make sense and be internally consistent, in other words. I don't need to have anything in common with them, I don't need to be able to "relate" to them, I just need to be able to UNDERSTAND where they're coming from and have it all make logical sense in the story itself.

Honestly, I always thought that "understanding where they're coming from" is what most people mean by "relate to", and "connect with" implies a more personal connection with the character. Like, if I'm complaining about a really specific issue I'm having with my mom and someone says "I can relate," I don't assume they're having the exact same issue with their mother. I assume that they understand that family is difficult because they also have family of some sort and can connect the dots. In fiction, I don't need to be a samurai princess in hiding to relate to being underestimated while also being pressured to live up to the expectations of my elders.

But obviously, people's mileage varies.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2026-01-27 16:48 (UTC) - Expand

I can't get lost in a fictional world if I don't connect with it on some level. Characters don't have to be exactly like me, or similar to me. But they do have to make me invested in what happens to them. That's a connection.

Getting caught up in the nice beat of a song is a connection. Admiring someone's talent for art is a connection. Being entertained is a connection, enjoying the acting or special effects is a connection. Being curious about another culture is a connection.

It's not necessarily about being self-centered.

I forget the title but several years back I watched some movie about an alien creature that ended up on earth, took the shape of a woman and then proceeded to act in a weird, inhuman way because it just wasn't human and had no concept of humanity. The whole movie was just about this creature. I wouldn't say I loved it (it was a very artsy movie that was just not really my thing) but I was fascinated by this completely unrelatable character and very curious to see where the narrative would go with it. It was the whole draw of the movie to me and it never once crossed my mind it might be offputting

Then I went to the IMDb boards (which were still a thing at the time) to read people's opinions about it and one of the main discussions was someone asking how anyone could possibly enjoy or even sit through this whole movie when there were no characters one could relate to or root for. It was the first time something made me think "huh. We don't all experience fiction in the same way".

I honestly can’t think how anyone could be a fan of something they don’t connect with. If you like it, that’s a connection. If you like enough to participate in fandom, you have a stronger than average connection to it, whether it’s a single character or storyline, or the whole cast or the setting.

As for relatable, some people enjoy seeing aspects of their existence in media. For some it’s a happy surprise when it happens and for others it is a requirement. I think the second type are far less common but they are more likely to be in a fandom so they may seem representative of a larger whole than they really are.

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