cranky_old_fangirls | (no subject)

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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?

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People are addicted to hype nowadays. I think there's quite a lot of fans out there who prefer talking about shows that don't exist yet, because then they can decide what they'll be, or what they might be, rather than actually seeing what plays out on screen and having to react to it, or be disappointed by it. Maybe that's a little mean, but it's something I feel like I see more and more these days. Part of me even thinks the popularity of Game of Thrones is partially based on the fact there just isn't an ending yet, so people can continue to speculate on what might happen, or what they hope will happen. It feels like there's a lot of anxiety in fandom these days (and a lot of other places), and just being able to imagine what a show will be like gives you a feeling of control over it, and you don't have to have the kind of conversations you have to have when something concrete did happen. Idk. Just my two pennies. I'm sure the people who saw the short genuinely loved it and are excited for a show to happen, but there seems to be a LOT of excitment and tribalism over things that haven't technically happened yet these days. But then, I'm mostly into video games at the moment, where hype is basically a given.

That is nuts. Usually, my favorite time in any fandom is before a thing actually comes out. That usually is the happy time with good lore or meta discussions.

I was hesitant to post because I didn't want to sound like I was bagging on any one fandom, but I had just never seen anything like that before.

To be honest, I'm not in a lot of fandoms at the moment. There haven't been a lot of tv shows that interest me for a while, and when I watch films I don't really want to know or discuss them until I get a chance to see them, so maybe I just don't pay enough attention to fandom anymore. But it does feel like something that happens, on Tumblr at least. In a way it doesn't surprise me - you see so much fanart, and so many headcanons and aus that diverge from the show, and so much hoping that a particular ship or storyline becomes canon - which it sometimes does literally because the fans requested it - that it almost feels like fandom can become quite separate from the actual stuff it's based on these days, like no matter what happens in a show it doesn't really matter, because the fans will be able to 'fix' it. In some ways, it makes sense that a fandom would emerge that almost doesn't need the source material. But it sucks. In a way, I assume it's an offshoot of the lore and meta discussions thing - just some people taking it a step further, assuming the stuff they're discussing WILL happen, and then comparing it to other shows that can't possibly live up to stuff people have basically come up with on their own. It's still weird to see it happen though, like you say. I guess it will be interesting at least to see how the show turns out and how the fandom evolves with it.

That's an interesting thought and it makes me wonder about two things -- how fandoms differ for Netflix shows, which release entire seasons at once, and how fandom has been affected by the endless marketing that goes on for projects before they launch. For movies especially this seems to start a year before release.

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 :)

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.

And then you've got fandoms whose content is released sparingly and at unpredictable intervals, allowing maximum room for fannish speculation: A Song of Ice and Fire; Steven Universe; Harry Potter while the books were still being written.

Yes, not to mention that the shorter seasons in the U.S. and busy schedules of their participants often mean delays of a year or more in between seasons. That definitely used to be uncommon.

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