If you are part of the groups known as Millenials or Gen-Z or heck even Gen-X, then you probably know what a fandom is. Either you have friends who are active in a fandom, or maybe you were or maybe your kids won’t shut up about a fandom they’re in. If you went to public school, as most of you probably have, you most likely saw cliques of people that were interested in a T.V. show or card game. The term “fandom” came into use in the 1970’s to describe people who were into science fiction films, however, nowadays it has become an umbrella term for all sorts of things. UrbanDictionary defines it as and I quote, “An innocent word used for describing a cult of sleep-deprived people who obsess over one or multiple comics, books, tv shows, movies, video games, etc.” As a member of multiple fandoms, this is a fact-check true. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stayed up thinking about what else water benders could control in Avatar: The Last Airbender, or the tragic death of…okay I’ll stop. In this blog, I will inform you on what fandoms are good, what fandoms are bad, and why so many fandoms have started imploding.
As a member of multiple fandoms, I can say this for certain, not all fandoms are horrible. While, yes, many have gone down the woke drain, the true diamonds in the rough are still there if you look hard enough. The best example of this that I can think of off-hand is the Tolkien fandom, who are also called Ringers. This fandom has managed to withstand attacks from not just woke media companies, but also the largest online retail company on the planet – Amazon. When the expensive fanfiction shows in the history of television, Rings of Power, came out, fans of Tolkien’s work banded together and ratioed the trailers, promos, and the show itself into sheer oblivion, making Rings of Power the most hilarious flop in the history of television.
Fans were quick to point out all of the inaccuracies of the show, how it did horribly as compared to the original movies and even to the Hobbit movies by Peter Jackson (which fans of the book were also angry about), and turned it into one giant meme. I cannot tell you in full how many YouTube videos there are of fans ranting about it, criticizing the bad acting and writing. One of the most hilarious critiques of that show was by comedian and voice actor, Charlie Hopkinson, who did a series of deepfake videos called “Gandalf Roasts Rings of Power”. The first video in the series currently has 23,000 likes, which is more likes than the teaser trailer of the actual show.
In the show, the only real tie to the actual lore is the character Celebrimbor – now called Grandma-brimbor – and the forging of the rings, as well as a very recognizable brand name. To add insult to injury, the Rings of Power writer, Jennifer Salke, said that the reason why they added so many “strong women characters” is because Tolkien “didn’t have enough strong women in his stories”. Let’s take a look at that real quick…hmmm-hmm-hmm… let’s see we have Varda Elentari also known as Elbereth Gilthoniel, who even Morgoth was afraid of and who put the constellation, Valacirca, in the sky as a challenge to him…Aredhel Ar-Finiel, the daughter of Fingolfin who was a great huntress…Luthien – who by the way was based on Tolkien’s wife, Edith – who beat the tar out of Sauron with the help of her fluffy dog Huan, and put Morgoth to sleep so her boyfriend could steal a pretty gem…Nienna, the Vala of grief, wisdom, courage, pity, who taught Gandalf….Eowyn, who dueled the witch king in the Third Age… Elwing, the mother of Elrond … Melian the Maia who kept evil out of the greenwood for thousands of years…Galadriel, daughter of Finarfin, son of Finwe, who was one of the most powerful elves in Middle-Earth, was the wisest, and was elvish royalty…there’s a lot of strong women in the Silmarillion that did great things and were still feminine and were nothing like the women in Rings of Power who have no emotions and no distinct character. The writers also made Galadriel the genocidal Karen that none of us wanted. Once again, the fandom has laughed about this for months and has been making fun of the fact that the entire show makes Sauron – sorry Halbrand – just kidding, it was Sauron, look like the good guy, which is the worst example of lazy writing when your audience is rooting for the villian.
Unfortunately, bad fandoms are everywhere and unlike Tolkien fandom, they won’t fight the woke messaging that aims to tear them apart. A recent example of this is the Star Wars fandom, ruined by the Balrogs of…sorry wrong fandom…Space Slugs, Rian Johnson and Jar-Jar Abrams. This fandom is huge with several generations growing up on it.
How could it go wrong?
Well…all was fine until 2015 when the Star Wars fandom got Luke Skywalker replaced with a two-dimensional female character named Rey. While the first movie was okay in my opinion, the next two were woke garbage that had been thoroughly neutered and thrown into the content machine. In the last three movies, Luke is of course replaced by 2-D Rey Palpatine (a plot twist that we never saw coming), Han with a racially diverse dude named Finn, and I didn’t care enough to learn who else was replaced. The movies relied too much on nostalgia, from the original series, and Episode 7 was forcing a socialist regime down our throats. When the streaming service Disney + came out, the Star Wars fandom contracted face-tattoo syndrome, when the Obi-Wan Kenobi show came out. In this cash grab, the main villain is played by a black woman. Fans became angry about this not because of the skin color of the actress but rather because the character was so badly written and the story in general was a heartless tale to bring in more money. In the show, there was one scene where Obi-Wan shoots a barrier when he could’ve just walked around it. Seriously Disney, what are you doing? Anyway, Disney thought this was “problematic” and accused the fandom of being “racist” and “misogynistic”. The official Star Wars Twitter account even came after the fandom criticizing anyone who had a dissenting viewpoint. Heck, even other people in the fandom came after anyone who dared question this racially diverse casting.
This isn’t the only toxic fandom out there. A fandom I just recently left, The Percy Jackson and the Olympians fandom (which I’ve done numerous posts on), is yet another example of how if you get enough brainwashed idiots together who are too scared to question the author’s choices, you get a very annoying sitcom that no one with self-respect would watch. In the Percy Jackson fandom, many of the fans are between 11-20 years old and most of them just sit around complaining about social justice on YouTube or whatever social media sites they’re on. In 2020, the author of Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan, announced on Twitter that he had partnered with Disney+ (i.e. sold his soul to the devil), and in 2022, he cast a black actress to play a white character.
Another example of a well-established fandom contracting face-tattoo syndrome.
A good chunk of fans were quite angry about this and posted on YouTube that they had failing hopes for the show and almost immediately after making the announcement about the casting choice, Rick Riordan attacked the fans, calling them “racists”. The actress, Leah Jefferies, who has been in several movies went to Tik-Tok to say to fans that she had been getting rude and “racist” comments but didn’t care. Several major news outlets wrote about this including, but not limited to: Screen Rant, The Gaurdian, Hollywood Reporter, and several others. The conservative news outlet, Bounding into Comics, wrote a story about how Becky Riordan, Rick Riordan’s wife, was encouraging fans to harass people who were angry about this casting choice, saying, “A while back you (the fans) and I agreed to make these handles as kid friendly safe places as possible. We give no room to demagoguery. We focus on the positive, We are supportive and uplifting. We encourage fans to not give space to hate speech veiled or blatant. #DoNotTweetHate” Yes, very supporting and uplifting. This is not the only thing the fandom complains about. Rick Riordan also seems to be on a crusade to write LGBTQ+ literature for children and anyone who complains about that has also been brutally attacked. If you go onto YouTube and look up parent reviews of Percy Jackson spinoff series from 2015 to today, you can watch some of the videos of high-school to college age kids yelling into a camera about how “homophobic” these parents are and how “homophobic” some of the fans are. Almost all of them have a gay or trans pride flag in their bio or account picture too. Not allowed to think independently, I guess.
It is at this point that you might be wondering why so many fandoms have started imploding and attacking fans. After all, I have shared some of the most recent fandom horror stories that you might’ve heard of, so what gives? Well, like I said before, many of these fandoms have become absolute garbage nowadays because of woke corporations trying to suck money out of the fans. What started out as innocent communities of people who wanted to connect with other fans of the same thing have become huge money makers for these woke companies. They know that with recognizable brand names and the human condition of today where we are constantly looking for distractions, if they can wave something in fans’ faces that looks cool and is from that brand name and get them to watch it. And for the most part, its working. This is why so many – for example – Disney remakes are being produced. Companies know that Gen Z and millennials are nostalgic for things and are easily distracted, so they will put forth millions of dollars into something that is below par that people will still watch, often turning it into a propaganda machine. This is especially true in large fandoms like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. When you also take into consideration the cultural and political aspects of today, this gets worse, because many of the people in the fandom have been indoctrinated to believe a certain way. If they see other fans criticizing the belief that the movies are pushing, their reaction is going to be to attack in a swarm and get those people cancelled, often by bullying and harassment. This is the very definition of a toxic fandom. The definition of a toxic fandom is, according to Urban Dictionary, “When a person believes they have the only correct way of appreciating certain content. They will attack other fans that disagree with them even if they are discussing a topic the toxic fan knows little about or has only hear from second-hand sources .” And they are calling us…the ones who have put in the work, the ones who are making polite comments about the fandom, the ones who know what we are talking about, toxic. The nerve of these people is insane and that is why the fandoms have gone downhill very quickly.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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