Do fandoms ruin series for you?

[Loethlin]

I KNEW it's about SU the second I read "tumblr". A while ago, it would've been about Welcome to Night Vale. Or Legend of Korra. I just fucking knew.

OT: Oh man, the fandom I'm most active in right now, they almost did it for me 2 years ago. Let's just say that the fandom in question is... Intense. And it looks like there's no such thing as vocal minority. Everyone with a little interest in the show is vocal. I'm pretty sure OP can figure out what show I'm talking about, because "tumblr" and my avatar. Anyway, the fandom is divided into two large camps, and then there are some minor breaks within each camp. Every little scene gets dissected and there's a whole lot meta written about it, from every angle, right down to analysis of lighting choices, wardrobe, little signs (such as NO U TURN) that happened to be on the street it was filmed on, etc. And everyone's attitude is "my way or highway". But the big divide? That concerns SHIPS of all things. You either ship those two characters, or these two characters. No exceptions. Top it with the fact that some fans actually have a pull on people associated with the show, serve it with a nice gastrique of other fans DEMANDING a ship being made official (ok, I kind of get why they want it, bur demanding? really?) and as a side dish, have some tinfoil hatters trying to get the wives of the actors actually killed (nothing came out of it luckily, everyone's safe). Oh, oh, also, I forgot: Ship still not official, therefore QUEERBAITING!
Isn't this just so much fun?!
A "handful" doesn't even begin to cover it. It looks like no none can just enjoy the fucking show.
Well, I just want to enjoy the fucking show. I got into it bc of a nice car, nice music, and World of Darkness kind of feel. It's nice. I like it. But the fandom. Jesus H Christ.
But no. It got so bad after s8 that I really considered just flouncing, like so many other people did. But it dawned on me, that I can like the thing and you know. Not give a shit about what others think about the way I enjoy it, and no one can tell me how to enjoy it.
So I unfollowed most people associated with the grief, because who needs this bile spilled all over your fan activities all the time?
Now, I'm finally left alone to enjoy the show again, leave shipping where it's supposed to stay (in fanon, not canon), and I just shit out one or two fics a year, for Christmas and Halloween challenges.

Other of my franchises (long running, many shows, space opera) used to be the same but now with recent films, it calmed down a bit and now it's just the "get off my lawn" crowd vs the influx of new people.

 

[Drakmorg]

Nope. But that's because I've realized they're all extremely terrible and always do my best to keep away from groups of fans of anything.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Depends. On occasion, I am forced to interact with certain fanbases I would rather ignore, which means I either put up with them or I make sure to avoid them. In either case, that's being 'made to deal with them.' Like if I want to attend a midnight release for something, no matter how much I may like the game, I avoid certain ones; particularly anything Nintendo, Kingdom Hearts, or anything like that. It isn't an entire fandom though; it's the RABID fans. The squeeling, obnoxious people with mentalities ten years younger than their actual age, the kind that can't handle any sort of criticism about something they happen to love. Those are the kind of people I quickly get annoyed with, and they're often the loudest of their community. Conventions of any kind are almost completely out of the question for me now.

I don't let it stop me from enjoying a series in my own way, but I do have to go out of my way to avoid those types, because I don't mind having intelligent discussions about the pros and cons of various Final Fantasy titles, but I know that's never what I'm going to get. Like if I tell someone I didn't like Final Fantasy XII or XIII, I only get the two extremes - total agreement that both games were lacking or someone that flips out and tells me I only didn't like them because I 'didn't understand.' Which I guess isn't untrue, I really DON'T understand why someone would like them, but that's up to them, not me. Shit, my favorite Final Fantasy is FFVIII, but just because it's my favorite I don't delude myself into thinking it has no flaws. Objectively speaking, it's one of the weaker titles in the franchise. I just like it.

So no, fandoms don't ruin a series for me, but they do make enjoying it a bit more difficult if I'm ever forced to share the same space with them. When those communities start to blur the line between 'fandom' and 'fanatacism', I'd take standing in line with Call of Duty Dude-Bros over them any day of the week.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

To answer the main question - no, not really. I like what I like based on my own observations. I hold no fanons as being sacred and tend not to react to certain characters the way Tumblr's denizens might.

Take Ultron. I loved James Spader's take on the character and am saddened that he turned out to be a one-shot deal, but I'm not mentally erasing the circumstances of his demise or imagining that one of his drones got rescued by a kindly farmgirl.

"Protect this seven feet-tall smol* child!" says the fandom.

"Eh, there's comics where he's less of a dick, others where he's more of a dick and some where he's helpful. Continuity, schmontinuity. Take your pick," is my response.

* = small and possessed of sickeningly endearing qualities. Yes, that's a Tumblrism for you. Awful, isn't it?

 

[Saetha]

Add one more to the Souls series tally. I used to be really susceptible the to "If the fandom is terrible, it's grounds for hating the work," but I've been trying to overcome it and see things as they are. Just... haven't managed it yet with the Souls series. Holy shit, did their "This game is a ~true game~ because of it's ~incredible difficulty~ and all other games are snore-fests that could never hope to compare," schtick get old fast. Doesn't help that I had a really evangelical friend who wouldn't shut up about it.

Although I still really like Steven Universe, the fandom's maybe knocked my opinion down a few notches. Same with Legend of Korra, although by then my opinion was soured by the show itself, the fandom just ruined it further.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

When it gets to a point of influencing the show, like Supernatural, then fandoms can do a good series some real damage.

 

[infohippie]

I've been playing FF since Nintendo, and I don't do any of that shit you just described. Just because you do it, doesn't make it typical. You are not the metric by which "average" or "normalcy" is measured.

The guy's talking about the Japanese fanbase, they do that. The western fanbase is pretty much an afterthought, just as they are for all Japanese media. The marketing angle is always how to present this to Japanese fans in Japan, and the rest of the world just gets whatever scraps they can be bothered to translate and release. The western audience is never a consideration in any Japanese media.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

No, not really. I don't do fan-sites.

I was pretty annoyed by how many people were trying to spoil Game of Thrones plot points to me though. Does that count?

 

[Cryselle]

Can the fandom ruin something for me entirely? No, probably not. Anything that I think is truly good, I'm going to think it's good no matter how many other people hate it. And I'm not going to like something just because people tell me I should.

That being said, a particularly rabid fandom can lessen my enjoyment of something. If I like a thing, I enjoy talking about it. I'll discuss it with my friends and associates, and I do gain some of my enjoyment out of the ability to talk about what was good and what was bad, what I liked and what I didn't. A super-rabid fanbase can make it very difficult to have a good conversation on the topic. I'm never going to universally love something, and there aren't a lot of things I condemn every facet of. I do feel sad that there are some topics I just don't really feel like I can chat about because the fanbase is either super hostile and I'm afraid of being harassed for my opinion, or because they're just plain insane and I don't want people to associate me with them.

And if the creators allow the fanbase to start controlling the product, it almost always goes bad.


Captcha: "Which consumer electronics retailer guarantees the lowest price?" Really Escapist? That's just disgustingly low and I refuse to answer that one.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

For me, it doesn't come down to "that's the way it's always been;" it's a matter of preference.

I prefer my video game stories to be self-contained and fully experienced through the standard playing-though-the-game experience, and then any extra reading to be supplemental, rather than essential. Yes, this the way that "it's always been" in most RPGs and every main series FF that came before XIII, but that's not why I like it. I like it because, in my opinion, that it's a superior way to present a story.

At the very least, I feel that some kind of heads-up would be a appropriate. Some sort of "Hey! If you don't read the Datalog or any of the online novellas, the plot will be confusing and the characters will be poorly developed!" would have been nice. I wasn't aware that this was a problem until AFTER I played the game. Because every FF that came before was self-contained, I had no reason to expect that XIII wouldn't be.

So yeah, that's what's bothersome about it, for me anyway. The self-contained approach is, in my view, the superior way to tell a story, and I had every reason to believe, based on RPG and FF conventions, that that is what would happen with XIII.

That's fair and if you go (way) back in this topic you'll see I mentioned I played the JP version back when the USA version wasn't out yet so that is what I based my experience on. It is fair to take these issues with it I agree. The thing though is that this is not what FFXIII was for me due to all of these aspects that we have already fleshed out too much as is. For me it all was done well and I was informed and everything, which resulted in the awesome experience I describe.


When I ask you why you like it, telling me you like it because you believe it's the superior way to tell a story doesn't actually explain why that is. I'm asking what it is that makes it superior in your eyes. Obviously you prefer it cause you think it to be superior, why do you think so?

I was (and still am) neutral about this. I just judge on a game by game basis. XIII did it in its own way and it worked, so I like it in that instance. I don't try to come up with a maxim to say that all game stories are better told in fashion X because that in my eyes is needlessly restrictive. I just take each game for what it is with an open mind and see what comes out of it. This is how I approached XIII. Also, back then since the game wasn't even out yet, reading the novels was a great way to quench the thirst and make the wait til the release a lot more bearable. That's honestly what lead me to them in the first place.

I had to think about this one for a while, but I think I have a clear answer now.

The self-contained version is, in my mind, the superior way to tell a story because it doesn't alienate potential audience members. See, there are multiple types of would-be fans of something:

You have your "Type A" fans who were fans of what came before in a series or fans of the creative people behind the work. Type A fans are going to digest and take in every possibly morsel of an upcoming release. They're never going to miss a teaser, interview, or announcement. They're going to get on forums and stuff to talk about every teaser, dissecting them for clues. If the people behind the game post that there is online reading material that leads up to the release, they're going to read it excitedly. When the game, movie, book, or album releases, they're going to not only experience the thing itself, but pore over every little thing. For an album, they're going to go over the album artwork and read the lyric sheets meticulously. For a movie, they're going to want to watch it again with commentary tracks and watch every deleted scene. For a game, they're going to unlock every in-game text blurb and read them all.

You have your "Type B" fans who were fans of what came before in a series or fans of the creative people behind the work, but they're more devil may care than your Type A fans. They may watch some trailers or read some pre-release info, but they're not going to get into, and probably won't even be aware of, the extra stuff like online novellas. They're just going to play the game when it comes out.

You have your outsiders, people who don't know anything about the game or the even the series it comes from, but they could be introduced to it.

There are others, I'm sure, but these are the broad categories.

The self-contained approach works for all kinds of people, while the FFXIII approach only works for Type A fans.