you are what you eat: identity as consumption and what went wrong with jegulus
an incredibly niche fandom analysis
i joined the marauders fandom a little over a year ago, in october of 2021. as i’ve become increasingly involved in the social aspect of fandom, i’ve found myself simultaneously frustrated and fascinated by the constant stream of discourse and disagreement contained therein. the longer i observe and the more i talk to other fanfiction readers + writers, the more i find myself coming back, over and over, to the same question.
what the fuck is going on with jegulus?
the marauders fandom has been around since the publication of the actual books, and it’s a pretty safe bet that jegulus (james potter/regulus black) has existed for almost as long (on ao3, the earliest fic i could find with the tag was posted back in 2010—and that doesn’t account for any earlier fansites). but in 2020, the fandom received an influx of new fans thanks to the rise of “marauderstok.” in 2021, what started jokingly as “jegulus week” on tiktok led to a boom in the popularity of the ship and another influx of new fans, this time specifically for jegulus.
the thing that intrigues me about the jegulus popularity boom, as someone who was part of the new wave of marauders fans brought in by tiktok post-2020, is the sheer amount of drama that it brought with it. a plethora of jegulus writers have faced outright harassment, and there’s been an abundance of rude and entitled behavior that—based on my conversations with fans who have been around longer—is becoming increasingly and bafflingly common. of course, rude people have always existed in fandom spaces—but within the marauders fandom, there is undeniably something going on with jegulus that is making the sub-fandom an increasingly hostile place.
the only question is—why?
why jegulus? why this specific ship?
i’ve spent way too much time thinking about this question, so here’s the conclusion i’ve come to (bearing in mind that this is just my own personal thoughts; i’m by no means trying to portray myself as any kind of expert): i think the jegulus situation boils down to three intersecting factors that created the perfect storm.
the use of social media in identity-formation
the base to build off
timing and sheer coincidence
you’ll have to bear with me, because each of those points needs its own explanation, and i am very much going to be wading into the weeds.
social media + identity formation
we’re starting out big, and we’re talking philosophy—so buckle up, okay? because before i say any of the other things that i want to say in this essay, i need to make sure we’re working from the same page. here’s the deal:
there is no such thing as fixed identity.
(and look, i get it—this is a big concept that philosophers have been arguing over for ages, and this is only my own worldview, okay? you don’t have to agree with me. but this is the premise that this essay is working from, so you’ll at least have to humor me for a bit if you’re going to read on.)
as people, we are not born with pre-existing, inherent entities known as “identity” that we can subsequently “discover” throughout the course of our lives. identity is not a treasure buried in your psyche; there is no amount of learning about yourself that will one day unveil a static, unchanging, and fully-formed interior persona. this is not to say that identity does not exist, only that its existence does not predate and cannot be separated from our interactions with the world around us. human identity is fundamentally fluid, unstable, constantly shifting and changing. the person i was at fourteen is different from the person i am at twenty-four not because i somehow “discovered” my One True Self, but because i became a different person. that’s what growing up is; our identities change throughout the course of our lives, and we become different people, and those people we become are shaped by the world around us and the experiences we have with it. identity is a fundamentally social project.
now, this viewpoint doesn’t exactly gel with a lot of modern Western thought. in fact, it’s pretty directly contradictory; Western thought places so much emphasis on the individual as a neatly confined being with sharply delineated edges—it is preoccupied with the soul, or if not with the soul, then the mind. we are taught to think of identity and the Self as a static, fixed entity that we only need to properly excavate in order to reach a sort of interior equilibrium, a satisfaction and comfort with the person we Truly Are.
this is bullshit. sorry! but it is. i understand the urge to eliminate the discomfort and uncertainty of a constantly shifting identity; i understand the impulse to mitigate the turbulence. but if it is a lie to say that discovering your True Identity is possible, and if you are then fed the lie that only in discovering your True Identity will you ever know peace, you are being set up to fail. again—if you disagree with the initial premise here, then you’ll disagree with my conclusion. that’s fine! but this is my essay, and i’m gonna run with it.
let’s talk about how this connects to social media.
right now, in our current historical moment, almost all social media is being slowly (or not-so-slowly) swallowed by the vast and yawning chasm of the Algorithm. that’s because the Algorithm is good for capitalism. the Algorithm breaks down the boundaries between content and consumer, streamlining the system so that everyone is consuming each other all at once. we, the social media users, are consumers consuming the content of social media. at the same time, social media is consuming the content of our data. that data is then consumed by advertisers, who use it to sell us more content. we are thus increasingly stuck in a never-ending cycle of consumption, held captive by algorithms that soothe our anxieties by offering us tiny, consistent dopamine hits while working to break down our attention spans and our capacities for critical thought so that they can keep us trapped in echo chambers of endless consumptive entertainment.
fun!
within this context, identity is a tool of social control. in one of my favorite essays, “social media is not self-expression,” rob horning writes:
So the social order is protected not by preventing "self-expression" and identity formation but encouraging it as a way of forcing people to limit and discipline themselves — to take responsibility for building and cleaning their own cage. Thus, the dissemination of social-media platforms becomes a flexible tool for social control. The more that individuals express through these codified, networked, formatted means to construct a "personal brand" identity, the more they self-assimilate, adopting the incentive structures of capitalist social order as their own.
what he’s getting at here is that social media wants you to treat your identity like a buried treasure that you can unearth. advertisers want you to break yourself down into a series of labels, because that makes it easier to sell you things. so social media feeds into the lie that identity is something you can discover about yourself. it tells you that if you’re lonely (and we’re all lonely, thanks to capitalism), all you need to do to connect with other people is post on social media! in posting on social media, you are learning to turn yourself into content for others to consume. you feel pressure to present yourself a certain way, to nail down a persona, to construct the identity that you’re supposed to be “discovering.” in that same essay referenced above, horning goes on to say:
…what I am trying to emphasize here is how production in social media is often sold to users of these platforms as self-expressive creativity, as self-discovery, as an elaboration of the self even, but it is really a narrowing of the self to the reductive, defensive aim of getting recognition, reassurance of one's own existence, that one belongs.
are we still following? is this making sense? social media sells itself to us under the guise of fostering connection, when in reality it increasingly works to discipline us into more stratified and categorized consumers. the problem is that this performance, in and of itself, is a project of identity-building. there is no simple separation between the personas we perform online and the people we are when we look away from the screen.
like—let’s look at the philosopher louis althusser for a moment, and specifically his theories on interpellation. essentially, althusser suggests that our identities as subjects, as individuals, can only exist through interactions with other people. if you’re completely alone, completely asocial, then you cannot engage in any project of identity formation. but once you encounter somebody else, someone who says, “hello, who are you?” — only then are you actually called to perceive yourself as a subject, an entity separate from the person you’ve encountered. only then are you forced to consider the ramifications of that separation, the nature of your identity as an individual. nina power summarizes in her essay about althusser:
Either way, we only become subjects as a result of being directly hailed: we are called upon to be subjects either directly (by repression) or indirectly (by ideology). Who we are is not some preexisting being with our “own” feelings about what is right or wrong, or about our own identity as a particular “kind” of person, but rather we become subjects through repetition.
are you still with me? are you following the dots i’m connecting here? let’s recap: social media perpetuates the false claim that you have an inherent, pre-existing identity which you need to discover. it assures you that you can do so by breaking yourself down into a series of easily digestible labels and aesthetics. you can then connect with other people and receive validation that your identity is Seen by posting that carefully outlined and pinned-down persona on social media. in doing so, you are given the illusion that you are discovering some interior truth, when all you’re actually doing is participating in this project of breaking yourself down into content for others to consume. every time you repeat this process, that repetition only strengthens your adherence to this constructed performance of identity. you feel lonelier, but don’t know why. you seek connection. you put yourself into more boxes. the cycle continues.
at this point, you’re probably thinking—weren’t we talking about jegulus? and the answer to that is yes. yes, we were. we still are. i promise. because here’s the two main takeaways from all my pontificating on identity:
you are what you eat
when we’re goaded into constructing our identities largely or exclusively within the realm of algorithmic social media that brainwashes us into viewing everything through the lens of consumption, our identities become the things we consume. when social media performance is your identity, every piece of media you consume becomes a reflection of your supposed Interior True Self. i think this is why there’s this perceived increase in morality policing in media; one of my favorite substack writers, charlie, puts it really well in her essay “meditations on meanness”:
We don’t see culture as a vehicle for artistic expression, but instead for moral expression, and as such our capacity for connoisseurship is at an all-time low. A film can be visually uninspired, a song can be derivative, a book can be poorly written, but as long as it espouses some rhetoric of universal justice it will be lauded as “important”. This is boring. It is uninspiring. If you even critique the mechanisms of the culture industry and its monopolized outputs (Marvel Movies, Taylor Swift, etc), you are deemed at best a hater and at worst a misogynist/racist/classist/homophobe depending on the day and the detractor.
it is no longer enough to just like or dislike something. everything you post about on social media must reveal some Inner Truth. the things you like must be Morally Pure, and the things you dislike must be Morally Reprehensible. obviously, this is an extreme way of thinking, and yet i see it seeping insidiously into the ways we interact with art—especially within the marauders fandom. this, i think, is at least part of the reason why we see so much discourse about “problematic” fanfiction or “toxic” characters that seems to operate from the premise that any representation of a character doing a bad thing is Bad, unless the work explicitly tells the reader that This Character is Doing a Bad Thing. rather than viewing fanfiction (or literature, or art more broadly) as a conversation, something inviting the reader to think critically and form their own opinions, we have grown used to consuming media that presents us with moral codes which we are then expected to regurgitate—and social media is systematically eroding our abilities to understand why that is a bad thing.
no art. only Content
if you learn to socialize primarly through the lens of consumer economy, you’re primed to view everything as Content. i’ve talked about why this doesn’t work for fanfiction at length over on tumblr, but essentially—fanfiction is created outside a consumer economy. it is something people do as a hobby, for fun, for themselves and maybe their friends. we should be treating it as what it is: something created for creation’s sake, not for profit, and generously shared with anyone else who’s interested.
the problem is that fanfiction is Content now. it’s Content on tiktok (and on other social media platforms, to a lesser degree). once “marauderstok” became a thing, fanfiction was inserted into this consumer-content economy, and people began to interact with it the way they’d interact with any other Content that people create. but the people making this viral marauderstok Content were, by and large, not the same people creating the fanfiction. so suddenly, huge numbers of people were flocking to read these viral stories and treating the writers as though they’d intended to go viral, whether that was actually true or not. it’s this disconnect that is largely responsible for the seeming increase in rude, entitled behavior within the marauders fandom—fans approaching the space from a tiktok lens (for lack of a better term) are engaging with an entirely different culture.
so—there we have it. there’s our deeper, underlying sort of issues when it comes to social media + identity formation, and some of the ways they’ve created a new culture within the marauders fandom. but that’s all broadly applicable to the marauders fandom—it still doesn’t answer the question: why jegulus?
the base
part of the reason that i think jegulus, specifically, became such a fractious sub-fandom has to do with the backdrop of where it was coming from.
popularity of harry potter
simply put, harry potter is popular. it is one of the most wildly successful and well-known franchises. this makes it accessible to many people; when people started to post about fanfiction on tiktok, it was easier for someone who’d never engaged in fandom before to say “huh, i know about harry potter. i think i’ll check this out,” as opposed to smaller fandoms. the vast majority of newcomers in the era of post-pandemic marauderstok (myself included) likely already had some background knowledge of the series and were just bored and/or curious enough to check out what people on tiktok were screaming about.
fuck jkr
at the same time, many people getting into fandom via tiktok despised jkr and wanted nothing to do with harry potter. the marauders fandom sort of straddles this cognitive dissonance; it’s removed enough from canon that it gives a sense of distance from jkr, while still being rooted in a hugely popular and extremely well-known franchise. thus, it was easier for it to gain popularity on platforms like tiktok.
popularity of mlm ships
i think…this point could be its own essay lol. in fact, i’ve already talked about this over on tumblr, and plenty of other people have also theorized as to why gay fanfiction is so overwhelmingly popular—so i’m not going to turn this into an essay within an essay. suffice it to say: mlm ships are popular. hence, another point in jegulus’s favor.
lack of canon
here’s where we start to get into the stuff that (at least, in my opinion) specifically contributed to the sudden rise in jegulus’s popularity. when compared to popular mlm ships like wolfstar, there’s a relative lack of canon information to go off. both james potter and regulus black are pretty minor characters in the actual harry potter series, with very little known about either of them—and yet, they each have just enough canon information to extrapolate and run with it. what we end up with is a ship in this sort of nebulous sweet spot, with just enough canon for people to get attached to the characters but not enough canon for people to all agree on a single characterization—leaving room open for plenty of contention and disagreement in the way the characters are actually written. fun!
lack of content
this is something someone pointed out to me in a message on tumblr—compared to more popular ships in the fandom, there’s a relative lack of content. jily has 21k works on ao3, and wolfstar has almost 36k. in comparison, there are only 4.6k works under the jegulus tag on ao3. the sudden explosion in jegulus popularity combined with the (relative—like…there are still thousands lmao) lack of content may have contributed to the pushiness from jegulus fans and seeming entitlement from some fans who demanded writers write faster or post more.
the drama of it all!
jegulus is a fun ship! there’s a lot of drama inherent in a story about somebody falling in love with their best friend’s brother, and james potter was already a beloved character for the marauders fandom. regulus’s characterization seems to be something that people have really latched onto as well; put all together, it’s not all that surprising that the ship became so popular so quickly.
timing + coincidence
honestly, i do think a big reason that jegulus, specifically, became The Ship is just…coincidence! like, yes, part of it is all the factors listed above—but part of it is also just that some people decided to write jegulus fanfiction in 2021, and other people decided to post about that fanfiction on tiktok, and those tiktoks just happened to go viral. i’m sure there are any number of ships within the marauders fandom that could have had the same thing happen—but they didn’t. so, i can’t conclude my list of factors without giving credit where credit is due to simple timing + coincidence.
the perfect storm
okay, so here’s my theory—everything, all rolled up together:
2020 - covid. tiktok explosion. algorithmic social media strengthens its grip on society. we fall deeper into the trap of constructing our identities based on our consumption of Content. marauderstok gains popularity, thanks to the already-existing popularity of harry potter combined with the desire to build something separate from jkr combined with, like…the virality of atyd. 2021. by chance, somebody starts jegulus week. more new fans talking about jegulus. key jegulus fanfictions start to go viral on tiktok. a new wave of fans is drawn to jegulus thanks to the dramatic appeal of the ship and the intriguing canon information there to build off. but because there’s not enough canon to hammer down any one set fanon interpretation, contention flourishes. people argue about the characterization of the characters. people feel the need to defend the jegulus ship from jily, or vice versa. people take issue with the gray morality that comes from regulus’s death eater activity in canon, and the way this gray morality could impact the “golden boy” image that many people have of james potter. all of these points of contention are relatively small and unimportant—but for a wave of fans who have learned to construct their identities based in their consumption, media is a reflection on morality. things become more and more contentious as fans take personal offense over these disagreements, feeling as if their very identity is under attack when they’re told that something they like is “problematic,” seeking to justify anything they dislike by calling it “toxic.” everyone needs to claw their way up onto a higher horse. fanfiction is Content, and the way you interact with Content tells the world Who You Are. also, fanfiction writers need to produce more Content, and they need to produce it the Right Way, and they’re making it to go viral, aren’t they? they’re making it for an audience, aren’t they? the Content they create is a reflection on their morality, right?
and…there we have it, folks. suddenly, the jegulus fandom has become notorious for the amount of harassment, hate, and drama contained therein. and the thing is, i really do think that most of these issues are rooted in the twisted way we’ve learned to construct identity via social media. jegulus—as in, the ship itself—was mostly just in the wrong place at the wrong time, with enough built-in appeal to ensure that people picked it up and ran with it.
I love this take and I largely agree with it. I am absolutely fascinated with the way that living our day to day lives is so quickly becoming a commodity and must therefore be made suitable for consumption. Also, it’s really difficult to communicate philosophical ideas and in case you were wondering, I think you succeeded.
So if u view identity as flexible, the identity you portray as influenced by social media is just a step in your identities never ending journey and as long as you (or a social media influencer) recognizes that do you think it’s okay to let your identity be influenced in this way?