WP2: Jules’ Interview
Juliana Pincus, or Jules, is primarily known online as @wonder.house7 on Instagram for her large following of fanart creators and enthusiasts alike. We met in the USC animation program and became fast friends because of how similar our experiences were with the online world. It’s always hilarious when you can clock someone in real life who has spent a vast majority of their time on the Internet as me and Jules did to one another.
https://www.instagram.com/wonder.house7/
At around seven thousand followers on Instagram and around fifteen thousand on TikTok, her online antics have gained her quite a sizable audience. As I did with my other interviewees, I asked her her feelings on it.
She explained to me how she resolved to pay less attention to the number game, but the daunting text at the top of an Instagram page can tempt the soul. “Usually sometimes I go down and I’m just like looking at the past posts I’ve made and it’s like, OK, this one has 9k and this one was 5K. So, like, now I see, like, what my audience wants more of. So I’m like, I should make more of that.”
Even when she doesn’t earn any money off of the work she is doing, she mentioned to me in our conversation how she can’t help but see her accounts as a sort of business.
Jules continues: “And also it’s weird. I find myself comparing numbers for accounts that aren’t even mine. It’s like when I see, even just, like, big YouTubers like I’ll see Kurtis Conner or something, I’ll be like, OK, he has 1.7 million this one [video], but he only got, like, 900k on this one.”
The ‘business mode’ her brain goes into when consuming numbers alongside content tells us a good deal about how social media networks are structured. Their obsession with instant responses and data is infectious, and even someone who’s trying to casually watch a video can narrowly escape it. I know I do the same thing unconsciously. I’m sure even users who don’t use the Internet to produce content like me or Jules do it, too.
She had a similar observation to the one I had.
“There’s like a huge thing happening, and it’s really weird because, like, it’s even like changing, like, the type of things that you post because I know it’s actually, like, if you post reels, you get like more attention and stuff and it’s like starting to favor one type of content. I feel like it’s leaning more towards, like, a content creation thing.”
At the risk of sounding like a broken record about issues surrounding larger platforms, I pivoted our conversation to focus more on Jules’ community experience. As mentioned before, she engages almost exclusively with fandom art and communities. Her content, or rather, art pieces, typically surrounds a franchise called JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. A lot of our conversation later discussed this show.
I figured to myself before talking to her that fanart would disconnect you from yourself. In my own experience, fanart is a touchy place when inserting yourself into the equation. Basically, you’re making art of something entirely separate from yourself for people who only really care about the separate source material.
With my hypothesis in mind, we continued.
“I think whenever I engage in fandom stuff, it changes the way I think about art. But having a of like… a following, like, it accentuates that to the max. Because not only am I indulging in something that I really like, it’s also to please other people now. So I’m just kind of thinking like, OK, well, I don’t want to post too much of this thing. I want to have some variety to please people, like some people in my community. But I also try to, like, actually make art that I enjoy.”
Again, that concept of making art and working for the pleasure of other people resurfaced. She continues, talking about her original content alongside this fandom work: “On top of that, it’s like I completely, like, my original characters and, like, original content completely goes out the window where it’s like I’m not even thinking about it. It’s just mainly like making content for this one fandom.”
Another part of this equation is how many fandoms you cater to. In Jules’ case, she focuses on one fandom that her content and followers all surround. I, on the other hand, find it extremely hard to work for one subject matter all the time. I jump around in my posts, mixing it up between original characters, popular fandoms, and also more niche interests of mine like dollmaking. It pretty much explains why I have such unsteady numbers.
“Usually what happens when I start phasing out of a fandom is I start like, I take characters that I like from that fandom and just kind of like, turn them into original characters. So I’m curious to see if that’ll happen now and how my followers would react to that.”
Letting followers into more original content or personalized posts for Jules is, in a way, intimate for her standards. After working so closely with fandom art for so long, she tries to combine the two in a way that keeps her audience at arms reach.
“Like I think I guess the brand that I set up for myself, it’s mainly positive because I mean, it’s like I kind of portray an idealized version of myself or the version of like, I want people to see it. And, like, well, it is. That is still a real part of me. It’s like, I don’t have to show people my lower moments or just moments where I’m second guessing myself, which I kind of prefer. And it’s also just like, it’s easier to keep, like, my interests and my personal life very separate like that. That’s how I prefer to connect with people online. So I think ultimately it’s been positive because if people are going to form an opinion on me, they’re going to form it on like what I think about, like, fictional characters.”
It’s essentially a way to protect herself, she explains. The way she presents herself omits certain aspects of her personal life for safety and for comfort. We both agreed how odd it was of a standard for people in the community to so easily reveal personal information to their followers or online friends. As we both dove into the online world at such a young age, we thoroughly understand how messed up it can get when you reveal too much of yourself. (See: WP1)
Apart from that, she inserts her identity into her online presence in other, more discrete and personal ways. Buckle up, because she has a lot to say about it.
“I will say, I think being a part of, like, the Jojo fandom actually did help me connect to my identity more. Which is really cool. Like, I think a lot of the fandoms I’ve been in the past, it didn’t like have a lot of like black characters are like or mixed characters or just there wasn’t a lot of attention right to them. And a lot of the people I interacted with well, if I ever interacted with them, like they weren’t really like, I think they were usually like white or just like. And definitely like a lot older than me. So it was hard to relate to people and also relate to the characters that I saw on screen.”
For context, Jules is mixed race and explores it a lot in her art.
“But I think with JoJo’s just like being obsessed with the characters that I am obsessed with, it’s like, I think part of the reason why I make so much content about Avdol and Polnareff. [Two characters from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure] It’s, like… in making content with them and I guess sort of like a romantic kind of way. It’s nice to see because like my parents are like an interracial couple. And it’s just like seeing that, it’s just, like, really sweet, really heartwarming. And it was like, I don’t, like, see that like a lot. And also just seeing how complex their relationship is. And then also just like being like a mixed couple, it’s just nice.
Projection and what’s called “headcannon”, which is basically a fan made theory or trait about a character, is absolutely huge in fandom circles. It’s what makes them so popular beyond just the canonically accurate story. Once fans get their grubby hands on a character they like, they’re capable of turning them into a completely different person, for better or for worse.
Having good or even subpar representation in source material and mainstream media is so important for the thousands of other users like Jules. From my watching experience, I can say first hand that JoJo is not exactly the pinnacle of POC or LGBT representation, but because of its massive fanbase, there’s a lot of room for fans to impose themselves or project their ideas onto them.
One of Jules’ favorite characters, Avdol, is a black Egyptian character who is a part of the main cast. We often joke about how he gets the short end of the stick in the main story because of “racial motivations,” because, man, his character does not have much luck compared to the main light skinned characters. Because of his mistreatment in the series, though, Jules feels inspired to make more content of him to supplement what’s given to the fans in the series.
“Yeah. And it’s especially better [to project onto] characters who don’t really get that much attention in the fandom. It’s, like, a really good feeling and like you, you find yourself making observations that other people do about these kind of niche characters. And you all kind of there’s like this sense of solidarity.”
Many of these fans also being POC, the solidarity around Avdol carved out a special spot in the community that Jules really connected with.
“And it’s also like, I think making content with Avdol helped me connect with more with like my black identity and also like black people in the fandom. And just, like, other people like me, which is really cool, it’s like I got to learn more about like black culture and just, like, different hairstyles and everything that I think that’s what made me want to try out more hairstyles as well. It’s kind of cool. And just, like, feeling like I’m in a community with like other, like, black creators or like mixed creators or just creators of color, which was really like rare for me. Like, I never experienced that. So it’s just really nice just having that, I think.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CR7CPEyF328/
The intersection between an identity and a show or game two people like can be tremendous, especially when in an artistic fanart space. For example, I’ve felt particularly connected to a random artist I found on my explore page who drew Dipper and Mabel from Gravity Falls celebrating Hanukkah, despite there being no real evidence of them being Jewish. It was a nice headcannon that made me feel included in a piece of media I like.
In any case, she proved me wrong. My art tends to lean away from my identity for probably some deeply rooted psychological reason, so I figured it was the same for everyone. Rather, there’s entire communities built off of shared experiences and identities in fandoms and art circles I had no perception of.
What I got from our conversation was just how rewarding it was making art for yourself, even if it diverges from what is typically seen as ‘personal’ art. It doesn’t have to be some intense abstract piece that represents your entire childhood and trauma. Instead, it can just be a character you like with a hair style you like to wear.
Simple as that.
Sources:
Pincus, Jules [@wonder.house7]. Drawing. Instagram, 29 July 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/CR7CPEyF328/
Pincus, Jules. Personal Interview. 4 March 2022.