Do fandoms ruin series for you?

Rikun

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Here's a subject I wanted to open to you guys here, and I wasn't sure where to put it since this can apply to both games AND non-gaming media alike.

There was some recent Tumblr drama that I won't go into details with, but let's just say that a certain animated series has an extremely rabid fanbase that had almost caused one of their own to make a tragic, life altering mistake. Since then, I have seen many abandoning the show altogether and even outright condemning the creators to allow the fandom to become this wild, which doesn't make sense to me.

But overall, I do wonder from your personal experience if a show/game/movie ever had a fandom that may have tainted the brand in your eyes (Sonic fans are a staple example). Do you ever let a rotten fandom taint your appreciation of a certain series, or are you able to keep the two separate?

And maybe for those who find it difficult to separate a fandom from a series, is there advice any of you would offer?
 

Fat Hippo

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I wouldn't say it's the mere existence of the fans that ruin something for me. But it is possible for fans to have a negative impact on a series or franchise. I think that rabid fans are, generally speaking, their own worst enemy, in the sense that they have a negative impact on the creative freedom of a series. Their constant bickering over where the series should go, their emotional and frequently contradictory advice to the creators, their obsession with minor and unimportant details that don't matter to anyone outside the circle of the most extreme fans: it's all completely poisonous to the creative process. Because really, the fans don't know what they want, they will never agree on what they want, but they will argue to the death about it.

A good example is Star Wars. Disney did the exact right thing when they chucked the Expanded Universe, because >99% of the movie-going audience either doesn't know about it or doesn't care. It would have just been this incredible mass of "Lore" they had to keep in mind at all times. So instead they ignored the small but dedicated <1% who will go see the movie anyway. Doesn't mean the movie will be good, but it has better chances than it would have otherwise.

It's probably easier for a big corporation like Disney to do this, but I can imagine that a rabid fanbase like this can be a lot of pressure for say, the author of a fantasy novel series, who doesn't have the disconnect that a business executive enjoys.

...hmmm, this wasn't exactly on the topic of the thread, but it's what came to my mind when I saw the title. Sorry.
 

pookie101

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for me its been more general..gaming and nerd culture has done a pretty good job of turning me off recently

there were always bad elements to put it mildly but lately ive noticed its going from bad to out right vicious and batshit

someone says mean things about your hobby and people send death threats and plan to murder your kids
 

Johnny Novgorod

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No, but for that matter I don't recall the last time I started on a series that had a massive fandom.
 

Queen Michael

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I try to stay away from fandoms as much as I can. It seems to me that being in a fandom entails loving the series as a whole, but considering every individual moment the Worst Thing Ever, totally OOC, an aweful thing that ruined your ship, and so on.

I'm not part of the Star Wars fandom because I love the prequel trilogy too. I'm not in the Homestuck fandom because I love the intermission. I'm not a part of the Doctor Who fandom because I consider Steven Moffat to be a fine replacement of Russel T. Davies.

In short, I just don't hate the things I like to the degree needed to be a part of a fandom.
 

Hawki

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Pretty much. It's why I'm willing to partake on these forums, but have long since abandoned specialized forums based on a single setting. General conversation I'm fine with. But getting into fandom wars is something I turned my back on long ago.
 

Imre Csete

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Thankfully it died off, but the Souls fandom was pretty annoying a few years back, always talking about how that series put hair on their chests, and how they got into the Salty Spittoon thanks to those games, and everyone else is just an unworthy scrub. I haven't played any of those games because the franchise seems so hyped, but I doubt they are that big of a deal. There are tons of guides and youtube videos to help you out nowdays, it's not like playing X-COM on DOS with only your monthly game mags helping you out.
 

Drops a Sweet Katana

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My enjoyment of things isn't really ruined by fanbases, but a shitty fanbase can make me hesitant to express that enjoyment. Case and point: Steven Universe. I love this show. I think it's funny, sweet and light-hearted while still providing some real impactful stuff. But the online fanbase is downright toxic at times, saying that it 'belongs' to a certain few groups and no-one else, projecting certain attributes on to characters and attacking people who don't depict them that way. Not gonna lie, shit like that makes me a little bit ashamed.
 

Harlemura

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The Steven Universe fandom has kind of hindered my enjoyment of the show. Well, the vocal minority has at least, but that's probably more often than not the case with all fanbases. I still like it for what it is, an okay cartoon with a nice theme of acceptance. But ever since all the fake reviews were left on that motel after the Keystone Motel episode, I always feel uneasy watching the show because I'm worrying that any of the events taking place might be the next thing that the fandom takes too far.
 

JemothSkarii

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I think I've mentioned this in another thread, but the -monogatari fanbase can annoy the shit out of me sometimes. Not that it'll stop me watching it, but like... there's one chunk that just watches it for the booty (which can get annoyingly excessive). But then there's another big chunk that over-analyzes it to the point it gets dubbed 'deepest show ever'. Maybe I just don't see it, but while I love the show, I don't think it's some massive commentary on something like fanservice.

As for other fandoms... yeah, I'd say rabid fans have put me off shows.
 
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Queen Michael said:
In short, I just don't hate the things I like to the degree needed to be a part of a fandom.
This is a good way of phrasing it.

In addition to the fandom consuming itself, there's also the problem of non-fans. One of the worst qualities of people is that they can see a group privately enjoying themselves and decide, "I'm going to go over there and try to ruin their day by being mean. That is a good thing for me to do, and a good way to spend my time." A lot of the time it's covered with the veneer of "I'd like this thing, but it's so dumb, I'm going to actually sit down and write a speech about how dumb it is interspersed with phrases like *shake my head laughing* so everyone knows how smooth my put-down is, and how much of a funny joke this is for everyone involved."

I get so tired of talking about something online only for the inevitable shitposters to show up and ruin the conversation by insisting that X is dumb, or Y character doesn't make sense, when people are totally willing to admit that but want to have a conversation about aspects they do like. The anti-fan then pulls in the hardcore fan from whatever nether realm they were occupying, who further turns the discussion into back and forth yelling between two people who don't want to listen to each other in the first place.

It's relatively easy to avoid the toxic fandom if you stay away from their watering holes, but the anti-fan is everywhere on the internet, looking for a conversation they can turn into garbage and wasted effort for everyone involved.
 

Fdzzaigl

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Yes. Well perhaps "ruined" would be the wrong word, but they definitely succeeded in pissing me off a lot and they actually caused a lot of harm to many series and games in the past as well.

Example: I was in the alpha / beta of the original FFXIV MMO. Now I'm not a Final Fantasy fan, plus I'm primarily a PC player. The game was in an absolutely horrific condition just weeks before launch. Yet on the beta testing forums the only thing you'd see were hordes of fanboys praising the devs and absolutely hating on everyone who was pointing out how ridiculously broken and not-fun the game was.

Needless to say the game crashed and burned on launch. Luckily that game actually got redesigned after a while.

Can't say I've had too much trouble with tv series in that regard, but I don't usually go out of my way to get involved or discuss those either.
 

DoPo

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"Oh no, I want to enjoy X but I am not able to because of what random other people on the Internet think of it."
-- Me, never.
 

happyninja42

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Rikun said:
There was some recent Tumblr drama that I won't go into details with, but let's just say that a certain animated series has an extremely rabid fanbase that had almost caused one of their own to make a tragic, life altering mistake. Since then, I have seen many abandoning the show altogether and even outright condemning the creators to allow the fandom to become this wild, which doesn't make sense to me.
Well damn, now I want to know the name of the show.

OT: No, I don't really care about a fandom for a show. If I like it, I like it, and I don't really care what the rabid fans/detractors have to say about it.
 

Zontar

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Well they sure haven't done any positives for my enjoyment of different series. I got into Doctor Who by watching reruns of the old days and was excited to learn it was coming back and was "only" going to have a 6 month delay between its UK and Canadian broadcast (hey, it was 2006, anything less then a year's delay was fast). When I did learn about the fandom I honestly had no idea what caused it to become the way it is, because it certainly was NOT the content of the series, that's for sure. It wasn't until very recently the show changed to reflect its fandom (something that has resulted in a very noticeable downturn in quality to the point I've abandoned the series).
 

Cowabungaa

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Not really. It doesn't really make sense for me usually. I mean, the show and the fanbase are two completely separate things. It's fantastically easy to ignore the fanbase and simply only enjoy the show. I didn't even know there was a rabid Steven Universe fanbase. Sometimes it's really great to step away from the internet so you can ignore crap like that.

I make one exception; when the fanbase starts influencing the show, aka excessive fanservice. Case in point; Sherlock. That for me really fell apart when in season 3 Moffat oh so eagerly wanted to please its Tumblr fanbase. That's when I stopped watching. It's also why I shy away from a lot of anime.
 

Worgen

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Happyninja42 said:
Rikun said:
There was some recent Tumblr drama that I won't go into details with, but let's just say that a certain animated series has an extremely rabid fanbase that had almost caused one of their own to make a tragic, life altering mistake. Since then, I have seen many abandoning the show altogether and even outright condemning the creators to allow the fandom to become this wild, which doesn't make sense to me.
Well damn, now I want to know the name of the show.

OT: No, I don't really care about a fandom for a show. If I like it, I like it, and I don't really care what the rabid fans/detractors have to say about it.
Judging from the artists tumbler, I think it might have been Steven Universe. That shows fandom seems weirdly angry about things, maybe its just me coming from the brony fandom, which really tries to be accepting. When the people who run Equestria Daily said they were going to do a website like EQD for Steven Universe, the fandom reaction was bad enough they almost didn't before they decided 'fuck it' and did.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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I will sooner discard a fandom than I will a loved series.


There's thankfully not many cases I had to do this. The big one was the final fantasy one. I used to frequent boards back before ffxiii was released in America and I had imported it from japan because the US version would not have the original voices. I loved the game thoroughly and as one of the importers I participated and exchanged info with a lot of eager people interested in the game. When the USA version hit though, a lot of annoying negative people who didn't understand that you had to read the novels (which were up online for free) for the story to fully make sense and that the battles were easy cause the goal actually was to 5star them and not just survive, which spawned the annoying cult of drones repeating "you can beat the game by mashing X". It had just become a negative environment and instead of having to explain these things for 30 times in a day, instead of being convinced that a game I absolutely loved, one which made me actually cry 3 times and which I finished in 5 days (50 hour long game) somehow sucked cause people who played it with dub voices and didn't do anything correctly thought so, I just decided to stop being part of the community and retain my happiness.
 

CrazyGirl17

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Not really, though vocal minorities for series, like say, Sonic the Hedgehog, make me long for the internet to have a taser option. Because of them, making Sonic OCs is more awkward than it should be. And let's not get started on the waste of space that is "Chris-chan". I swear to God if I had a Death Note...