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Separate 'Fandoms' of the Same Franchise?

Leila Hann said:
Well yes, because vampires.
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Man, and here I was trying to be subtle about the fact that the Jojo fandom is a conglomerate of blood-sucking monstrosities.

I guess the truth is out now, the real division in the fandom is between the vampires and the hapless victims that are unknowingly drawn in to increase their numbers. That's what reading the manga really means, giving up your humanity to the immortal lord Araki. True facts.
 
I think true blood also had it happen, as the TV adaption did change many things. But I only watched it and haven't read it.
 
Side Character said:
Yeah, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is probably one of the most clear-cut examples of a split fandom you can find.

To elaborate, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a manga series that started in 1987 and is currently ongoing to this day. The series is divided into individual parts, each of them being a largely self-contained narrative with different protagonists and settings that are loosely connected with the others. At the moment, Parts 1-4 of Jojo have received full anime adaptations, and Part 5 is scheduled to release later this year.

The divide in the Jojo fandom is primarily between anime viewers and manga readers. Those who're willing to read the manga have access to all of the series' content that has been produced so far, including monthly releases of the still on-going Part 8. However, those fans who are only interested in the anime only have access to half of said content, meaning that there's about 23 years of Jojo that they aren't able to consume until the later parts are adapted as well. Fortunately, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has been receiving new anime adaptations in about two year intervals since 2012. Part 4 having come out in 2016 and Part 5 coming in 2018. However, this still means that the anime won't have caught up to the current point in the manga for about a decade though, not to mention that the series will have moved forward even further by then.

This has created a situation where manga readers can't discuss almost half of the series they've enjoyed with anime-only viewers without spoiling them, and where anime-exclusives have to limit their interaction with the wider community or else risk the same thing occurring. This isn't helped by the fact that the age of the series has many older fans toss out spoilers more casually than they would a more recent work. For context, the part the most recent anime adapted concluded it's run in 1995. New content for anime-exclusives is more than a decade old for manga readers.

This has resulted in a community that urges new members to read the manga to the extent that it has become a meme in and of itself. The fandom can get obnoxious about it sometimes, but fortunately the majority more-or-less respect the decision that anime-exclusives have made, and welcome them as new blood.
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And I'm probably part of a weird subset of the fandom where I started with the 2012 anime, but am currently reading the manga.
 
aeqnai said:
For Trek, TOS/TNG is the eldest divide but hardly the only one. Each show has some amount of the fanbase dedicated to it, and on a slightly larger scale there's a few different 'eras' that fans separate into: TOS/TOS Movies, TNG/TNG Movies/DS9/VOY/ENT, and JJTrek/DIS/etc. (the currently produced stuff). You could also make an argument for sorting ENT with the current stuff, or splitting the TNG era up along a line somewhere near the airing of the movie First Contact.

And then there's the side materials and beta canon, which is its own kettle of fish.

Really, overall, Trek fans are like Scots.
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"What do you think about "In the Pale Moonlight"?"
 
I can definitely think of multiple examples of this. For Pokémon you've got people who play the main series games, competitive players (divided further by different rule sets) , tcg players, people who follow the anime, go players, merchandise collectors and then the niche communities surrounding spin-off games.

And then there's Sonic which has multiple games and cartoons that are pretty much nothing alike and each fandom is constantly arguing about the direction the series should head in, only for Sonic Team to take it in yet another entirely new direction.

There's also Skullgirls (technically any fighting game? But mostly Skullgirls lol) in which there's the people who play the game competitively and the people there for the lore and characters, the two groups pretty much never interact.
 
DestinyPlayer said:
I'm pretty sure that W40k essentially has a fandom for every side of the conflict. And at least three or four separate fandoms for the imperium alone.
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Hm, but factions-in-fandom still interact with each a lot...

Where does one draw the line between fandom-factions and separate fandoms? Like in Avatar fanfic communities, Zutara and Kataang exist in the same place, they just argue with each other.
 
I think a rather common divide occurs in a lot of shonen or action heavy properties between those who are in it for fights and power levels and such and for character relationship drama. As an example you get on the ends of Naruto fanficion 1) massive phonebook sized stories about why X character is the biggest baddest strongest most eye balliest ninja who ever lived. And 2) weepy tele novela soap opera tier realtionship drama's filled with betrayal love and heartbreak... but little to no ninjitsu.
 
Alex said:
I think a rather common divide occurs in a lot of shonen or action heavy properties between those who are in it for fights and power levels and such and for character relationship drama. As an example you get on the ends of Naruto fanficion 1) massive phonebook sized stories about why X character is the biggest baddest strongest most eye balliest ninja who ever lived. And 2) weepy tele novela soap opera tier realtionship drama's filled with betrayal love and heartbreak... but little to no ninjitsu.
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And now I'm imagining a telenovela that punctuates the plot twists with DBZ style beam clashes.
 
AKuz said:
"What do you think about "In the Pale Moonlight"?"
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DS9 is my favorite Star Trek simply because it takes the Federation's views and actually goes and puts them to the test. Picard could speak at length of the Federation's virtues, but at the time of TNG there hadn't really been a major conflict or existential threat to the Feds at the same level as the Romulan and Klingon wars. Sisko is actually having to think these things over and bend his morality simply because if he gambles wrong it's going to be the end of civilization as we know it in the Alpha Quadrant.

I like the whole updated look of Discovery and the sort of mashup between NX-01 Enterprise/TNG look they have gone with. My issue is that Lorca (outside of spoilers) is pretty much a Janeway who's outright malevolent, and makes the most extreme/stupid decisions that alienate him from his crew and command simply because he's supposed to be the stereotypical 'Hard Man Making Hard Choices' because he's at war. There's no real interest to his character simply because its shown that he's pretty much outright amoral time and time again with his only real positive aspect being that he keeps our designated protagonist out of prison.


Audiences today have much wider access to shows, games, books, movies, TVTropes, etc. than ever before which means that there's a lot more cynicism. There's very little that hasn't been done before, and viewers who are really invested in a franchise are either going to complain about something that's a complete rehash or if something diverges from what they're familiar with, and no matter what you're going to get a lot of "well we've seen all of this plot before in XYZ."
 
Arguably Fate Stay Night fans vs Fate Zero fans.
 
Does FOP fans who like Chloe being on the show vs FOP fans who hate Chloe and think it should end count?
 
The Spyro fandom seems to be weirdly split between the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy and the Legend of Spyro reboot.

And Skylanders, but I'm not sure if that even counts as Spyro anymore.
 
Q99 said:
Hm, but factions-in-fandom still interact with each a lot...

Where does one draw the line between fandom-factions and separate fandoms? Like in Avatar fanfic communities, Zutara and Kataang exist in the same place, they just argue with each other.
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For 40K in particular, I can think of corners of the fandom who mostly ignore each other because they're invested in largely mutually exclusive parts of the setting. There definitely are Rogue Trader/1st Edition fans whose image of a Space Marine is that one gnarly John Blanche-illustrated dude shooting a tiny malformed Ork through the head while foaming at the mouth, and who continue to happily play their oldhammer without reference to any further fluff/rules developments. There are players who came in through the newer 3rd edition but never really accepted the Tau or the C'tan-reoriented metaplot. There are players who did, but maybe thought the 5th edition Necron retcon was a bridge too far. And then there are the fans who like 30K i.e. the Horus Heresy period, possibly due to Primarch soap opera reasons, and consider the actual 40K era uninteresting.

Any sufficiently old fictional property which has gone through multiple editorial teams will probably be accompanied by differences among fans who came on board at different periods, especially if canon retcons have taken place. Stuff like Battletech or Legend of the 5 Rings also comes to mind.

And that's not to mention the fundamental split between the hobbyists who just like to paint and/or DIY models, and the fans who are really into the gameplay.
 
Heh. It's also just a side-product and generally disliked in Japan too (sometimes with "you're making us look bad to the US fans!" cited as a reason).

G1 and Beast Wars fans used to have a lot of divide, but that's faded.
 
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