#saw a post today about people making a squid game fandom and THATS what i mean. you do not want a fandom for media like that

[elftwink]

i do think there’s lots of critiques to be made about which pieces of media get attention and to what degree but sometimes people on here are like “why is nobody on tumblr talking about xyz” and the reason is that the media in question is well-written, self contained, complete, and has very little loose ends, all of which combine together to actively resist fandomization. movies usually don’t have fandoms like shows do because in a tv show you get all this extra space to open plots and explore characters with a decent chance some stuff won’t get resolved for years or maybe ever, allowing fans to step in and speculate (and the same for any version of stand alone vs serial media). character driven stuff has more of a fandom because most types of fanwork are character focused. ongoing media has more of a fandom than stuff that’s finished because part of the appeal of fandom is speculating about future events; a huge chunk of fans leave after a finale even if the fandom persists. stuff that’s full of plot holes and bullshit that goes nowhere have HUGE fandoms not despite but because of that bullshit; it makes people want to explore the potential avenues that are dropped and imagine what the canon would be like if all this stuff actually mattered or if xyz happened instead of abc. fandom thrives on open-endedness, on unresolved tension, on unanswered questions, on ongoing stories. that’s not to say there aren’t exceptions (people will start a ‘fandom’ for anything under the sun) but in terms of popularity and longevity there’s a very clear pattern in what does and doesn’t get fandomized and it feels so obvious to me that it throws me off when someone seems to have not picked up on it. to the point where i assume they don’t personally frequent any fan spaces because that’s the only way you wouldn’t pick up on it!

and since fandom is the primary way people interact with media on tumblr dot com... kinda goes without saying no one is talking about it without a fandom. there’s tons of stuff i absolutely adore but have no interest in talking about on here because all i would say is “you should watch it” because there’s nothing else TO say after that. if something speaks for itself i’m not making my whole blog about it. i have to be able to add something for it to be worthwhile.

[closing note disclaimer that this is not about people who are rightfully pointing out that media with marginalized protagonists, esp protagonists of colour, often are ignored or sidelined by fandom with bullshit excuses. many of the media brought up in those discussions are very obviously also conducive to fandom in the way i’m talking about here, mostly commonly that they’re ongoing shows with interesting characters. also many of them do have fandoms, it’s just that the fandom is actively hostile to both the characters in the media and other marginalized fans, which is a huge issue but not what i’m talking about. this is more about when people bring up a decent stand alone movie and are shocked people stopped talking about it 2 weeks after its release. that’s like, a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of fandom rather than a valid and demonstrable critique of bias and bigotry in fan spaces. please do not leave this post with the takeaway fandom formation and fan behaviour never has anything to do with the bigotry and biases of fans (it does, often); i just like talking about the different factors that create fandoms.]