I like so many things that I have difficulty dedicating my interest to one specific thing, and even when I do, I rarely participate in fan discourse beyond casual comments and conversations with my friends.
That said, I think it may be best if I talk about a series of observations relating to multiple different fan bases that I could tentatively consider myself a part of. Here we go:
Steven Universe!
The target audience for this show is mainly children, but the community I generally have contact with are people in their late teens/early twenties. Many of these people are women. Many of these people are queer.
Steven Universe is really notable for a lot of reasons: it is one of the first (or the first? I think the first) Cartoon Network cartoon(s) created by a woman. It has a cast of diverse characters of multiple races, body types, and genders, including nonbinary genders!!! Its main character is a young boy who, unlike many young boys in cartoons, is earnest and sweet and thinks the world of the women in his life without being ashamed of it or shamed for it. It actively attempts to dismantle harmful tropes in its narratives. It portrays characters dealing with the loss of a loved one in ways that are painful to watch and realistic. Possibly most notable, it portrays two characters of the same gender kissing and being very obviously in love- and in case people try to say their relationship is platonic, this relationship is brought up again and very clearly established as romantic a few episodes later.
It is no wonder so many queer teens and young adults are drawn to it.
And that is what a lot of the discourse and values of this particular faction of the fan base are about: the importance of this show's positive portrayals of things that are often portrayed as negative. Something many people have brought up is that if they had been able to watch a show like Steven Universe when they were children, it would have helped them a lot in regards to coming to terms with aspects of themselves or their identities that they spent a considerable amount of time struggling with, or continue to struggle with.
Additionally, many members of this fan base are also fans of anime, who appreciate its clear influence on the show's art, plot points, and even specific choreography. Shipping is also a major aspect of this show's fan base, and it is also a show that is often cosplayed because the character designs are clear and simple, and because so many people have been heavily impacted by specific characters.
Twin Peaks!
I am not sure I am an active enough member of the fan community to know a lot about it, but I really like this show and things have been really buzzing, so I think it is worth discussing.
I think the primary areas of concern right now are:
- Will Twin Peaks FINALLY get a third season? for the love of god
- Will David Lynch be working on that season?????
These are the big questions, and this is all anyone has really been talking about for the past several months. Twin Peaks has a huge, outspoken fan base, but for some reason, nothing ever seems to work out. The original season three? Cancelled. The series of films to tie up the series? We got one.
But what is really cool about this fan base is that people are acting on it, and that the cast of the show is heavily involved.
Things really started picking up for all the fans of the show because we heard it was going to be picked up for a third season 25 years after the fact. Everyone was on board and people were getting hopeful. The entire season was written by Lynch and Mark Frost. And then it was revealed that Showtime was not going to give them the money Lynch felt was needed to fund the show, so he left the project.
This sparked a lot of talk, and on the 25th anniversary of Twin Peaks, this adorable video of the cast was released. Fans were encouraged to add their own "Twin Peaks without David Lynch..." and to sign a petition.
Since then, the many of the actors have stated that they will not participate in the new Twin Peaks if David Lynch is not working on the show.
At this point, either the season is going to be cancelled, or Showtime is going to get David Lynch back on the project. There is a fifty-fifty chance.
For a show that stopped running in 1991, this is a wild time.
Other than current events, I know a few things about fan feelings about the show: things got pretty bad when Lynch left season two, Annie is an okay character but she and Cooper are a terrible fit, the pilot that Audrey had a fling with never should have existed, James and Donna are boring as hell, Agent Cooper is perfect and Audrey is perfect and they should have ended up together, the Horne brothers are adorable, Gordon and Shelly are adorable, Fire Walk With Me is almost too brutal, and the cliffhangers left on season two ought to be illegal.
Always Sunny!
Honestly I do not even know what to say about this fanbase and I probably should have thought of something before uploading the picture.
I think this is a great show that gets dismissed as an immature comedy, but it is actually really clever and satirical. What I love about it is that the characters, although likable, are pretty much always very wrong and they are never praised for doing terrible, terrible things, and the audience is never really asked to sympathize with them for doing terrible, terrible things.
Again, the people I tend to talk to about this show are queer teens and twenty somethings, so the depiction of queer characters comes up a lot as something very important. It has been confirmed that three members of the main cast are queer, but we are not really sure who two of those characters are. What we do know is that Mac is gay or bisexual. This is a problem because Mac is very religious, and he hates homosexuality. Mac is very much in denial.
Oddly enough, this resonates with a lot of queer people who were pressured by their religious families and community members to deny those aspects of themselves. And the show does not condemn him for his sexual orientation.
I am struggling to really speculate on this so here are some things that are important to a lot of Always Sunny fans in the form of a list:
- Mac is in love with Dennis
- Charlie is asexual or demisexual
- The gang are terrible for each other but none of them can function without each other
- Danny DeVito
- Dennis is also a little bit in love with Mac
- Sweet Dee is probably the most brutal character on the show
- Dee and Charlie are a little bit in love but will never ever tell anyone
- Rickety Cricket is the gang's Picture of Dorian Gray, becoming more and more unstable and deformed as the show goes on
- Frank is Charlie's dad
- Dennis is bisexual probably
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