strange/annoying fanbases
polycounter lvl 6
Not sure if this is the right place to discuss this, but what causes a series to have a rather annoying fan-base? You know what I am talking about, pairings, slash comics, cosplay, fans swooning over pretty characters, screaming people, the works. A prime example of this the Sonic fanbase, but these types of people don't seem on Mario. For you more medieval types, there seem to be more lewd fan content floating about for WOW than say Lineage or Skyrim. What attracts these people to certain series over others?
Replies
and how well it rule 34's. "A prime example of this the Sonic fanbase, but these types of people don't seem on Mario. "
What's the deal?
Mario has a pop-culture penetration of mostly his game appearances and some branded novelties (not counting the live action movie). Mostly his incarnation is exactly the same, as Nintendo has made sure that the brand of Mario is the same Mario as we encountered as children. While there are many adults that enjoy Mario games today, it's the same world that many adults have since abandoned when they "grew up" in their adolescence.
Sonic not only features in a wild variety of games but also has/had 2 separate successful comic book series, multiple types of childrens cartoons and even an animated movie. Plus of course the novelties. Sonic's incarnationhas been reconfigured many times in order to present him as the "cool", "hip", "radical" character that appeals to the current-day youth. His universe as seen in the games, comics, tv shows etc. reflect this by having a colourful cast of powerful characters (Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, etc.) and including content like robots, fighting for freedom, and an enemy that cares more about ruling the world than kidnapping princesses.
People who grew up as Sonic fans continued to have themes and characters they could enjoy and multiple ways of digesting it. When they grew old enough to incorporate more "mature" ideals and themes into their expression of a universe they still identified with. This results in the absolutely weird and strange stuff we see the fanbase do and this is only easier to encounter since in today's first-world lifestyle nobody has to grow up any more.
And this too of course. I'm a pretty big fan of anthropomorphic animals myself, but I'm also confused by the ideologies of the greater community.
In terms of WoW vs. Lineage and Skyrim. It's two things:
1) As with Sonic, it's penetration. WoW is the defining MMO it comes to mind first before all others and has more varieties of people playing it than ever before. These people are not just people who enjoy games and enjoy Warcraft and its lore.
2) Online. The ability to in-game find other people with similar interests makes such a big impact on these communities. Cyber-sex has been around since the Internet and it become a common activity in WoW as early as release. Expanding on this concept is no hard task.
Lastly
You're clearly not looking hard enough.
For example, no one cared about Homestuck until those damn trolls appeared. What was a webcomic is now suddenly a "lifestyle". wtf...
Don't get me started on a certain faustian reboot in which got its beginnings from a 'im manner than u cos i pink and i watch girl shows' /b/ meme. Borg infection is key to their influence along with youtube related video keyword spamming on every single thing, and other subliminal preachery. I think there's even an account here in which every post was an image macro pertaining to it.
There's something in common with both of these. Probably that f word, but maybe, perhaps, closer to the a word... or perhaps it's peer pressure.
Annoying fanbases come in phases because eventually the naive vocal young grow up and out of it. Some of the above I just mentioned probably once were "super big touhou fans"/"teen titans" at one point.
Even Darkstalkers isn't safe! FUCKING JON TALBAIN. There's a divide between the competitive community, and...... them. Similarly I bet serious Digimon players are fed up by those who came for Renamon or anyone else remotely canine. Anthro does play a factor and more often than not it, tends to fall into fox territory.
Point: Naruto manga/anime. You have this Sasuke guy who is a generic 'pretty boy'. I say this because there are so many japanese style characters that look like him, Gray in Fairy Tail is an example, one of the main characters in the never-to-be-released Final Fantasy Versus XIII is another.
Add some rivalry between the 'pretty boys' to the point people argue its sexual tension and you'll get an instant fanbase.
Merlin the BBC tv series is another example of this. If you search info on this series you'll find rabid fan girls pairing the main two characters. Again one 'pretty boy' and a bunch of sexual tension between them but nothing ever like that happens. (Even the British tabloid Telegraph said the last scene in Merlin had 'so much sexual tension between Merlin and Arthur you could cut it with Excalibur')
This is the conclusion to some of this slashing and fan pairing I've come up with based on the girls around me. Not sure how far this stretches but quick searches seem to suggest it's the same for others.
Side note I totally agree on the Anthro suggestion posted earlier. A friend of mine told me about a game, go to deviant art and search any word. If you don't find some sort of anthro within the first 5 pages of results, you win.
(Even searching 'Concrete' got me anthro results @_@)
I play the same game on youtube by searching for [insert thing here] Linkin Park
What is cool and or sexually interesting (imo) but somewhat under the surface of the culture at the moment but just bubbling up is what I find tends to be in the trend (hindsight being 20/20). The more hidden under the surface right before it bubbles up, the more fervent the fanbase.
It's probably why things are so hit or miss; something really has to have been designed to ride a wave the people making it probably were not even really aware they were on or where it was going... at least to actually catch it in time. The crazier more intense the wave, the more intense the fan base will be, but the harder it is to surf.
I think the bigger trends and fanbases though for things like.. fuckin, I dunno, lady gaga or something have to do with accessibility. Maybe some waves are just bigger in general because of some greater social trends going on?
Hmm, my theories have a lot to do with waves...
As much as I think Naruto is quite watchable, it is full of emo-faggery to the max.Hence the attraction.Same with FMA.
And ZacD is correct. The sonic thing is because of the antro angle.
Also anthro furry breasts and dicks, everywhere. It's ancient Egypt all over again.
As for WoW, take a wild guess at what's happening at the seedier servers and corners of the internet after this lady was introduced to the game:
Best thing to do is just ignore it if it annoys you I guess. People will obsess over anything, I mean just look at religion.
A blanket statement there. I understand its sentiment, but thanks to the power of the Internet, it can be misunderstood easily.
All large interest groups have their good and their bad. To be honest, I think gamers as a collective are a far more unpleasant subculture.
Yeah I wasn't being very serious with that, I thought the italics helped underline the tongue in cheek vibe of that, no offence meant.
Agreed on that, I honestly like a lot of anthropomorphic art, simply because it's something different than your dime a dozen space marine, knight, sexy girl or scary girl (no offence to those who make these, because most of the time they still look absolutely amazing).
And as you say it has placed a rather stupid stigma on that genre of art. Then again, seeing how that Pandaren was fully modeled, rigged and put into WoW to become the most expressive and best looking character type in the game so far.. it shows the best thing is to not give a shit what muppets say and show them how wrong they are.
This, this is often forgotten. I have friends in pretty much every currently popular internet based subculture (furries, homestuck, MLP, anime, whatever) and from what I've seen of their.. worlds.. it seems to be a bunch of different people doing their thing, some weird, some even weirder, some in desperate need of prozac and some completely average folks.
While gaming communities in general seem to be a cesspool of idiocy, racism, misogyny and entitlement complexes so extreme you'd think they were born asking why it took so long.
I hear you, Sonic isn't what he once was, and began to make less and less since as time progressed. I mean, what the hell was he doing in a place like station square?! This "cool" appeal actually made him joke in the long run, he's only recently recovered from this. I guess that having the fan base grow more would honest
Also what do you mean no one has to grow up anymore?
What's the deal with the anthro fetish? It's just beasts in a human state, am I missing something here?
leilei
Hmmm...This is no good at all. Where do these people come from? I have never really seen in irl, are they from the far corners of the earth or what? For the record aren't most of the dark stalkers undead types and digimon mutants, demons, dinosaurs, and robots. Why are these people giving the mammal 1% all the glory?.
Vysuki
About that Naruto, I'm not seeing the "pretty boy" factor. These dudes don't seem very pretty to me (i'm a dude though) I just see an angry rivalry. Honestly I don't get that aspect of the Naruto fanbase, shouldn't people be more focused on the genetic oddities and techniques that world's populace posses?
Where are these fangirls coming from?!
Where is the emo factor?! I'm not seeing it
Skamberin & Mooth
That makes sense in a strange sort of way.. I've never met such an individual in my travels, but I will take your word for it. You are saying this is planned? If that is the case than this is horrible.It seems as though the large fanbases don't seem to have as much of the weird folks mentioned in the other users posts.
What I meant was that while nerds, fanbases, and divergent subcultures have existed peacefully in the past, they were marginalised as not desirable for the status quo. Nerds would be considered socially awkward, fanbases would get their weekly fanclub meetings and subcultures would at best be ignored and at worst reported on prime-time current affairs tv shows.
A great deal of the foundations of these fanbases would be long-running media, especially fictional media that could be enjoyed through the fans youth and adulthood, but would be incompatible with the enjoyment of practical and "mature" activities: basically, the rest of society told these types of people to "grow up" and most importantly abandon the things that are considered immature, or else they would not accept them. So they did in order to fit in, to get a mate, and to get employment etc etc.
In today's society we consider ourselves to have the psychological enlightenment to allow for the peaceful happiness of everybody and thanks to mass-communication this is much easier. These days it is poor form to show prejudice or presupposition of anybody's lifestyle. Instead we try to encourange happy living and that means continuing to enjoy what we enjoy. Thus: adults enjoying previously "immature" things like video games, cartoons, sci-fi/fantasy, toys etc. are accepted.
People don't have to "grow up" because growing up isn't black and white any more. Personally I do think this is a good thing, but unfortunately it does result in those who are the least mature being heard more often.
Absolutely agree. There's this great game on xbla called - Dust: An Elysian Tale. It's pretty, fun, critically acclaimed and the story of its development by a small indie group is amazing. It's also filled with animal people. When showing my friend how awesome it was, he completely showed distaste for it when he saw the characters. While I know people have different tastes, these days I would expect it to be about gameplay/graphics fidelity/whatever and pretty much never the 'look' of the characters.
There's only three undead types. But, there are also three animal types. Guess which ones have the most obsessive and vocal "dont nerf, it means a lot to my life" fans? The said characters aren't competitively popular, and one of them is really loathed in Japan. These sorts of fans could potentially skew a competitive-in-mind arcade port just out of character obsession.
Furthermore it's not just restricted to the furries - Mega man also unfortunately suffers from a similar kind of brat fanbase these days ever since X4 and Legends. Like that Pandaren example mentioned above, there's similar going for Splash Woman.
Is the annoying part of the GNU GPL fanbase also (RMS) character obsession? I run a GNU GPL v2 game media project, however I want to stay far, far away from being part of the "submit a patch bitch. you are required to contribute" crowd and operating system radicals. "Freedom" shouldn't be anti freedom of choice. This fanbase stigma also impacts potential development and is part of the reason why so many Free Software games look crappy, due to a philosophical clash, and much less about the requirements of a software license. They probably wish for me to burn in hell for developing with Windows, Noesis, and Paint Shop Pro.
As far as I know, CC-BY-SA doesn't have the same fanbase or a crazy guy for an idol
:thumbup: Id looooove to see this asked on Deviantart
Oi, italics and above post already clarified that it was tongue in cheek. Don't be a dick.
Yeah we know. I'd like to point out though that I've never used italics for anything but emphasis! As in to get my point across harder and to be taken even more seriously!
Which for some people reading would make your tongue-in-cheek worse!
Even better I'd like to make a rad-cool furry character and post it with giant text saying, "FICTIONAL CHARACTER! NOT EVEN REMOTELY HUMAN!"
And yes, they are strange.
As the fandom grows bigger, with more numbers comes more strange people. And with more strange people, the number of casual fans dwindles, making a huge shift in ratio.
Now that I think about it this is pretty much true about every single group thing ever isn't it, the loud minority means we can't have nice things
Naruto series are aimed on teens.. most of its fandom are kiddo
OP readers are 90% adults
Every fanbase are annoying to some extent, but fanbase swarmed by emo teens just annoys more
SAme thing can be said for MLP, there is nothing wrong with adults for loving the show. But Brony, they who take it too far, defenitely are people on puberty .. and need to be shot.
HAHAHAHA
I find the show to be amusing but yeah, when I went to DragonCon there are a lot of people that take it a bit too far. It doesn't help that my wife is in one of the more popular groups for MLP cosplay (they won "Best TV Costume" in the masquerade contest). I find the same goes with anime. You have people that are totally normal and have a healthy respect for the hobby and then you have the other half of the fan base that are loud, obnoxious, and think it's totally appropriate to run up and hug you because you're in costume as a character they like.
I believe they call it a 'glomp'.
:thumbdown:
I have actually been "glomped" when cosplaying years ago. There's nothing quite like getting a full body tackle because "OMG you look like my favorite character! SQUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEE." "So, you assaulted me?"
It's not as bad as it used to be, but I also think that people don't tackle a 29 year old man as easily as when I was 16. I think some things are changing as they become more mainstream though.
I feel like when I was younger and anime wasn't as popular most of my friends who enjoyed it were nerds. We weren't very good at social interaction so you got all these people who didn't really know how to communicate since they had been ostracized and "OH OH, these people like what I like! I need to befriend them!" Only because we were bad at social interactions most the time people come off too strong and act like little weirdos. Nowadays though it feels like as anime, comics and games are becoming more popular and have such a wide audience people are more comfortable communicating their ideas. You still get the weirdos from time to time, but people seem a little more comfortable in their skin and don't have to try so hard. Mostly.
That's how I feel at least.
If you're about mid-twenties to thirties then you more than likely grew up in the 90s and early 00s consuming what would still be considered 'modern' media. If that media is still popular today then it will have current adult fans and likely groups of teenagers/children. We know this, but in the past...
A lot of us would have grown up without broadband Internet. When it came to consuming media and enjoying the company of friends with the same interests it would always just be a matter of: Consume media -> talk with friends about it -> go home and wait for next time. Now it is possible to have: Consume media -> talk with friends about it -> go on the Internet and immediately find more people who enjoy said media -> repeat constantly.
What's fascinating about our new age of communication isn't just the increased rate of fandom but that this process is now observable. Nobody went out of their way to study our individual social groups and seek out the wackos and obsessive types; you'd have to go to a convention for that! Our groups would have been the extent of fandom, our identity as 'nerds' and 'geeks' confirmed by our peers in schools or otherwise. Now we can actually stand back and watch the sociology and psychology of fanbases evolve in real-time.
We know this, we take note of something that existed but almost never encountered in our youth and make the effort to discuss it with the very social groups enabled by today's technology. We want to understand something that we think is new, but (if I may take a page out of Skamberin's book) is as old as religion.