(no subject)

[olivermoss]

This post is a few days too late, because Infinity Train just got announced as coming out in 2019.

BUT, here is a tweet from the show's creator addressing toxicity in the fandom, before the show was even greenlit:

"Hints haven't been working, so I'll just say it now: Stop shitting on other shows in the name of Infinity Train. You're taking the hard work that people put into their shows and disparaging it when they're trying to have their moment. It's just mean and breeds animosity. Stop."

I came across this tiny fandom for the show a while ago. I've had niche fandoms, but this was next level. An animated short existed, and some people speculated it would become a show mostly from stalking people's Linked In pages.

I've been in fandom a long-ass time. I've never seen anything like this, though.

The short looks cool and I hope the show is good, but ... just ... massive drama before the show is even greenlit?

Comments

[girlofprey]

If marketing/publicity people know about the stuff that goes on, I would absolutely thing they would encourage it or try to play to it. Maybe in a balanced way, so that people's expectations don't go TOO crazy - but maybe that's left to the showrunners, who want people to actually react to their show for what it is. It is interesting, and for a while honestly I couldn't think of a fandom for a Netflix show. But then I suppose Stranger Things really took off - and there are probably a bunch of other ones I haven't thought of because Netflix makes too many things to keep track of. In a way I really miss the old way of watching TV shows, where things were quite episodic, and you got that week of waiting where you could anticipate and discuss with people what might happen. But things change I guess, and the 'all at once' system has it's own good points. As for films, I'd say it gets a little murky given how many films are adaptations of other things nowadays - so a lot of people already know roughly what the characters and story and plot might be, and are already fannish about that, and bring those expectations to the new films. I certainly saw Avengers fic for at least a year before any of those characters met, and I really couldn't tell if it was comic stuff or anticipatory-for-the-film stuff, or suppose to be a mix of both. Fandom is changing I guess. Or maybe some of it was always like this, and I'm only remembering the 'golden age' parts :)

[yourlibrarian]

No, I think you're right that fandom is changing. My own perspective is that it is much less conversational than it used to be -- both in terms of people engaging less (even as fandoms grow to enormous proportions) and also in terms of having conversations rather than battles. The post above certainly seems to suggest that it is now a form of behavior totally disconnected from the canon source.

And yes, I do think the different ways that people now consume content has changed the way they engage (or don't) with others. For one thing, it is far easier to be spoiled now since people could easily be a year or two behind on a canon and be catching up via On Demand or Netflix whereas once even DVDs (or video tapes) were several seasons behind and a show wasn't yet in syndication. I think that made people depend on others more and the commonality of experience gave people a shared investment.

There are shows I was fannish about and would have likely been in a fandom but I was behind due to lack of availability and I didn't want to be spoiled. There are things I'm glad I missed as the fandoms got more disillusioned but also things I would have enjoyed at the time like meta.