Saturday, August 13, 2016

Left With Nothing

A few years ago, there was a cartoon I liked. It was a reboot of a cartoon that I'd liked during the '80s. It stopped and the official reason it stopped was due to toy sales not being that great. This annoyed me.

I was reading an article today about how an artist from a current cartoon was chased off Twitter by rabid fans. This was after reading an article about how awards contests are trying to deal with certain aspects of fandom attempting to rig the voting process. This also annoyed me.

What annoyed me the most was something mentioned in the comments section of this article (the one about the artist who had to leave Twitter). Come to find out, there was more to the story about the cartoon reboot cancellation that I knew. It seems that the toy line was selling fine, however, fans of the original cartoon were being so hostile and toxic to the creators of the reboot (and the toy line) that the company in charge decided that sales of said toys were not worth the agitation.

Now, this was just an offhand comment in the comments section with no proof to back it up. Other people responded like it was fairly common knowledge, but I still don't feel comfortable enough with that to actually say what cartoon it is.

I will say this, if it is true, it doesn't surprise me. Rabid aspects of fandom are becoming more frequent and much louder. They're half the reason why we can't have nice things and will probably eventually lead to us having nothing.

I don't get it. And look, this is from someone who is deeply invested in her fandoms. If you read the blog, you know how obsessed I can get. At the same time, I also comprehend that creators are people with feelings and their own ideas about how things should go. They tell the stories inside them. If we keep scaring them off, they'll stop telling stories and what will we have then?

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