The trend with fandoms nowadays seems to be:
– Praise the living daylights out of a show and shove its greatness in everyone’s face
– 2 years later, pick it apart violently and insult everyone who still enjoys it in as edgy a way as possible because negativity is cool
I’ve noticed this same trend, and as an aspiring artist/content creator, it disturbs me deeply. I know I don’t want to spend 1-3 years of my life on a large comic or animation project solely for people to enjoy from now ‘til the end of time… only for its true fan base to expire immediately like milk left out of the fridge, and only attract the lowest common denominator type fans and amass a useless “hatedom” afterwards. I’m sure I’m not the only one disturbed by this.
It’s like the relevancy of a work of art/fiction in this day and age keeps getting shorter and shorter. Is that due to shrinking attention spans? Is it because there’s a constant barrage of new works being cranked out everywhere, and other works just kinda get buried? Is it because things get too popular too quickly? (those seem to be the worst). I don’t know, but regardless I don’t like it.
An important two cents to consider
It’s likely because they’re things that attempt to cater to the new wave of social justice and awareness, and I say that in a good way. Shows that legitimately try to address things like LGBTQIA+, and gender roles, and racial issues, and anything else I’m forgetting in the moment.
When Tumblr sees that, we immediately latch onto this show, because the creators are clearly like us, they understand, they want to do good by spreading awareness.
The problem is that we go all in. They have to get everything perfectly right or they’re fucking it all up. If they make an attempt, they must be completely knowledged in what they’re addressing. Because we’ve put this show on a pedestal and adopted it as a beacon of morality.
As someone whose been there, it’s a dangerous path to walk down. When you expect the things you love to be perfect, you set yourself up for disappointment. Not to say you shouldn’t question things! But for fucks sake, what do you think you’re gonna get if you go for the throat the minute you find a hair out of place? Don’t put your favorite shows up on a pedestal. Don’t act like what you like has to be perfect. Understand that liking something flawed doesn’t inherently mean you’re forgiving those flaws. You can love something and also acknowledge what about it is fucked up. That’s called critical consumption of media!
No show – no one – is gonna wanna touch on issues if they aren’t allowed the chance to learn from their mistakes.
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