Sarah Z

Sarah Z is a Canadian video essayist and YouTuber who creates videos focused on media criticism and fandom histories, the latter being tailored for a primarily non-fannish audience. While not all of her videos about fandom are related to her own fandom history, she is herself a fan and has frequently discussed her time in Tumblr-based Supernatural and BBC Sherlock fandom.
== Fandom commentary ==
Many of Sarah Z's video essays comment on or detail the history of some aspect of fandom, especially (but not exclusively) Tumblr fandom. Some of these essays include:
* Tumblr's Strangest Obsession: A History of the Onceler Fandom, a video which - as the title suggests - details some of the history of Tumblr's Onceler fandom.
* Tumblr's Greatest Conspiracy: The Story of TJLC (Link), an essay on the history of TJLC and some of its biggest proponents. Sarah Z uses fake names for the fans under discussion in order to obscure their fannish (and other) identities.
* Tumblr's Failed Convention: The Story of Dashcon, a history of Dashcon from Sarah Z's perspective as someone who was active in Tumblr fandom at the time of the con.
* The Supernatural Finale Aired, And Tumblr Exploded, a video which attempted to explain the events of Destielgate, despite some of these events unfolding during the episode's scripting or production.Tweet by Sarah Z noting that her video was already out of date only hours after it was posted, thanks to the Italian dub being confirmed as a fake. (accessed January 14, 2021) (archive link)
* Two videos related to My Immortal:
**The Mystery Behind The World's Worst Fanfiction, which discusses the fic itself.
** The Author Of My Immortal Emailed Me, And Then It Got Worse, a deep dive into the fannish history of a person who emailed Sarah Z falsely claiming to have written My Immortal.
** A Brief History of Homestuck Link, co-written with Lady Emily, a two-hour long retrospective on the Homestuck fandom.
*** A follow up video, "Homestuck Sent Me A Legal Threat, And Then It Got Worse"
== Responses from other fans ==
;A Brief History of Homestuck
==Proshippers vs Antis controversy==
When Sarah posted her video Fandom's Biggest Controversy: Proshippers vs Antis in August 2021, some viewers were so outraged, 17 Aug 2021. that she wound up trending on Twitter. Some commentators felt they already knew Sarah's views on antishippers and proshippers prior to the video; for example, in a few discussions on Fail-Fandomanon in response to the video, anons asserted that Sarah had been involved in wank and subsequently harassed by a group of self-identified proshippers (rainbow meats?), and that she concluded as a result that both sides were equally bad.As discussed on fail_fandomanon: , 2021-03-15. , 2021-03-16. Sarah herself later said that these assertions (and assumptions) were untrue.Post by Sarah Z (dingdongyouarewrong) Archived version on Tumblr (Mar 30, 2023). While fans on various platforms discussed the merits and shortcomings of the video itself, there were reports that proshippers on Twitter harassed Sarah Z and her editor.
While many people enjoyed the video and defended it as nuanced, tweet by DegenerateThing, Aug 19, 2021., others criticized it for bothsidesism and perceived misrepresentation of anti-shipping as just one side in a debate rather than a legacy of harassment:
The video was discussed on fail_fandomanon here. One anon commented, "approaching the anti discourse as if it were a slap fight between antis and proshippers is a mistake. Proshippers rose as a response to antis, a fact that often gets lost in these discussions. While I understand that the conflict may appear to be between two sides, treating it like a ship war is going to erase a lot of nuance and, IMO, miss the whole point of why antis harass people in the first place, as well as how the proshipper's attitudes and behavior developed.", 2021-08-17. warlock4warlock also discussed the video and made similar points. One anon commented, "individual proshippers might be horrible but antis all share a fucked up ideology that promotes bullying"., 2021-08-17.
A smaller group took offense to her "as a tax-paying adult woman"https://twitter.com/murdersub/status/1427702372776783872?lang=enhttps://twitter.com/salensekai/status/1427813436939980806https://kemono.party/patreon/user/10496116/post/55016380 remark when she explained how she responded to people asking if she was a pro-shipper or anti-shipper, citing it as hurtful and ableist towards disabled adults who could not work and thus did not pay taxes.
== References ==
Category:YouTubers
Category:Commentators
category:Video Essayists