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7. What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?
Losing interest is my biggest reason for leaving, though I've occasionally left fandoms because of something I couldn't accept. Maybe it became clear that the source text was queerbaiting (Torchwood, actually, for the way it kept elevating het ships over non-het ones); maybe the quality went way down (New Who, imo); maybe the source and/or the people who made it did a massive racism or other fail and the fandom collectively shrugged (Top Gear, Harry Potter--I'd already wandered away from HP long before Rowling became the face of transphobia, but some of the reason I did was discontent with the heteronormativity, sexism, coded racism and antisemitism, slavery-apologetics, and utter failure to even try to change the status quo in the books themselves, and a lot of fans questioned it but a lot tried to justify it, too).
Even my love for The Magnus Archives and other RQ shows has been tempered by some pretty shitty decisions that Rusty Quill as a company has made. But I have to admit that I've watched some of the streams about The Magnus Protocol, and watching Alex and Jonny and Helen and Alasdair hanging out and having fun did a lot to rekindle my affection. I haven't contributed to the Kickstarter, but I also haven't ended my Patreon support like I had planned to after RQ laid off some staffers. Still trying to decide how I want to respond to the situation of "far from perfect ethically, but less bad than big corporations and probably less bad than a lot of small media companies, too." Trouble is, they promised to be good, and for a while they were or at least seemed to be, and I am saddened proportionately to the weight of my expectations.
Finally--this is getting to be a longer answer than I expected--I can be sort of estranged from a fandom by the overall tone of fan behavior. I might not actually leave, but I'll keep my distance. I'm keeping my distance from most of Our Flag Means Death fandom, which early on hit a critical mass to become, shall we say, explosive.
The full list of questions is ( under the cut )
Losing interest is my biggest reason for leaving, though I've occasionally left fandoms because of something I couldn't accept. Maybe it became clear that the source text was queerbaiting (Torchwood, actually, for the way it kept elevating het ships over non-het ones); maybe the quality went way down (New Who, imo); maybe the source and/or the people who made it did a massive racism or other fail and the fandom collectively shrugged (Top Gear, Harry Potter--I'd already wandered away from HP long before Rowling became the face of transphobia, but some of the reason I did was discontent with the heteronormativity, sexism, coded racism and antisemitism, slavery-apologetics, and utter failure to even try to change the status quo in the books themselves, and a lot of fans questioned it but a lot tried to justify it, too).
Even my love for The Magnus Archives and other RQ shows has been tempered by some pretty shitty decisions that Rusty Quill as a company has made. But I have to admit that I've watched some of the streams about The Magnus Protocol, and watching Alex and Jonny and Helen and Alasdair hanging out and having fun did a lot to rekindle my affection. I haven't contributed to the Kickstarter, but I also haven't ended my Patreon support like I had planned to after RQ laid off some staffers. Still trying to decide how I want to respond to the situation of "far from perfect ethically, but less bad than big corporations and probably less bad than a lot of small media companies, too." Trouble is, they promised to be good, and for a while they were or at least seemed to be, and I am saddened proportionately to the weight of my expectations.
Finally--this is getting to be a longer answer than I expected--I can be sort of estranged from a fandom by the overall tone of fan behavior. I might not actually leave, but I'll keep my distance. I'm keeping my distance from most of Our Flag Means Death fandom, which early on hit a critical mass to become, shall we say, explosive.
The full list of questions is ( under the cut )
