It's expectation. That's what ruins everything in any fandom, from Star Wars and LOTR to As the World Turns and 24 and My Little Pony.

People form an expectation for what something will be. The something is usually the next installment, a sequel, that sort of thing. And the expectation will be specifics. They will expect very specific things to occur in the next installment.

The things could be, well, anything. It could be a certain fight. A tone. This character and that character simply must appear and do X and Y and Z. This plot thread needs to be dealt with, that rumor should get screen time. The costume has to be just so. Such and such plot development will definitely be central.

On and on. All of it boils down to expectation. They walk in expecting things.

And when they don't get them, they get angry. Because they didn't get what they wanted. Which is a juvenile as it sounds, and isn't an exaggeration if you simply scroll through social media when the latest fan whatever shows up. You don't even have to go looking, have to go into the fan specific forums and places. These days fans don't have to hide like they so often had to in the past. So when they lose their shit, they do it openly and on purpose in an attempt to rally others to their "cause", to join the bandwagon.

Social media amplifies it. On the internet, everyone's a tough guy. They feel emboldened to lash out and puff up and shout. Especially right at people. They'll scream and threaten and insult, all sorts of things that are much, much less likely to happen in-person. Or, if they do engage in that sort of in-person behavior, it is usually less strident and more moderated. Whereas online, no boundaries. Win at any costs; all naysayers are wrong because they decided so, and that's just the end of it. They'll scream until you give up.

Nothing's wrong with not liking something. It could be the next installment of your fandom, it could be a standalone, it could be any sort of story from anywhere. If you don't like it, you don't like it and that's just that for you. Nothing's wrong with that, and you should be allowed to like one thing and dislike another.

But people are tribal, and (especially online) nuance has diminished dramatically. They can't accept that something they liked you didn't. Or that something they despise you found pretty neat. So they puff up and shout and all that tough guy stuff because they have to be right.

My very first movie memory is seeing Star Wars in the theater. I am a Star Wars kid all growed up. For a long time, it was just those three movies, a couple of books that had turned up for some reason, a couple more comics, and my imagination.

Then the movies released when I was older. I was so excited, I'd evolved a hard core movie habit. Saw Episodes IV through VI three times each in the theater. After years of my VHS copies, I had glorious big screen restorations. Those did really well, so Lucas committed and commissioned Episodes I through III.

And that's where it started. I went to the theater when Phantom Menance released ready to enjoy Star Wars. That's it. That's the only thing I wanted. To enjoy Star Wars. Not just any Star Wars, but new Star Wars! Finally, after so long, new stories. On the big screen. With new cinematic technology.

It was glorious. Lightsabers and Jedi! Star fighters and capital ships. Intrigue, war. Save the queen, fight evil, come on a day needs saving!

But I was appalled to encounter the backlash. Fans, many of whom were like me who'd grown up, were angry. This wasn't the Star Wars they expected. What did they expect? Well, that's a complicated subject apparently, and in truth not one I'm particularly interested in.

Because the guy whose opinion mattered was Lucas. Is he perfect? No. Is he the best storyteller that's ever lived? No. But is Star Wars his?

Yes. And he was nice enough to share it with me and everyone else.

I saw Phantom Menace five times. Twice in the first twenty-four hours, three in the first week, and four in the first month. No, I was not tricked or forced at gunpoint. Yes, I really did buy five tickets and sit through it five times. Yes, I know people rip on it constantly. Yes, I know all about the various fan edits and fan viewing orders and all that which pretend it doesn't exist.

I don't care. Is Phantom Menace a perfect movie? No. Are there flaws? Yes. Would I have done some stuff differently? Yes. If I could reshoot it and fix some of the stuff I'd change, would I? Well, okay yes.

But it was still Star Wars and I was still happy with it. I'm happy with it now. Star Wars Day just passed, and I watched a bunch of Star Wars leading up to it, and on the wonderful day, and some after it too. I ran through the first six movies and enjoyed each one. There's a lot of Star Wars now. Enough that little kid me who grew up with it would have probably lost his mind with the wealth of Star Wars available today.

There are "Star Wars fans" who think I'm a fucking heathen idiot who should be fed to a wood chipper. I know this because some of them have decided to scream and yell at me. It's happened online, it's even happened in person here and there (though, to be fair, it was a bit less openly yelling and a bit more snubbing and nose turning up in person).

I still don't care.

Every Star Wars that comes out, I'm ready to watch. That's the only thing I'm ready to do. I don't sit down with expectation about "they must do this" and "the tone has to be that." I don't demand that kind of thing from any of my stories, not even, and especially not, Star Wars. I just want them to be Star Wars, but beyond that I'm ready to experience a new Star Wars story.

Do I like everything Star Wars has put out? No. But I formed whatever opinion after I saw it. After I gave it a chance to amaze and dazzle and impress. Some of them did, some of them ... didn't.

I was pretty darned annoyed with Rogue One; I consider it a terribly flawed movie by someone who doesn't know very much at all about Star Wars. I feel most "fans" just get super hyped by the last half hour of action and forget how dicey and poorly the rest of it is written. Solo is a fucking train wreck, a master class in how to not tell a story (much less a Star Wars story).

Episode VIII has its moments, but is another film that was done by someone who doesn't seem to understand Star Wars at all. Don't even get me started about Episode IX, which is a failed story, much less a failed Star Wars story; nearly as bad as Solo. Disjointed, disconnected, full of deus ex machina. I feel some of the stage direction and physical on-set blocking in Obi-Wan Kenobi was worse than what a high school theater director could have managed, though I absolutely love the themes and overall story of the series.

I have theories about Star Wars, and I've even talked about them some. Mostly I feel a lot of fans grew up, and let memories of what they loved shape their emotions, but now they want that thing they remember loving to fit into a new shape. They want something they expect to be Star Wars to fit into what they'll call a more adult or more modern mold.

They have specific expectations, and lash out when they don't get what they want anytime a new Star Wars things releases.

Andor is a good example of what some of these kinds of "fans" seem to want, the kinds of expectations they demand be fulfilled.

So many "Star Wars fans" rave about it. I like Andor, it's a good story from start to finish. It's a very adult themed story, takes place in the Star Wars universe, and has some Star Wars trappings, but it's not quite what I'd call a Star Wars story. Why? Because you could take out "The Empire" and "Stormtroopers" and all that and drop the exact same story with no other changes into a spy thriller frame, or a resistance drama frame.

But I still watched it, and not once have I taken to the interwebs to scream at fans who rave about it. The fact they consider it the apex omega of Star Wars doesn't impact my feelings much at all. It's still solid, has some fun stuff in it, and I don't begrudge that I wish it was more Star Wars than it is.

But they don't return the favor. They want to scream at me because I like Episode VII. And I mean like. I love that movie, it's so amazing. Which is why it feels so bad the other two just dropped the ball and the story threads from Force Awakens went nowhere. The same fans will piss and moan about anyone who could enjoy Book of Boba Fett or Ahsoka, who won't jump on their die-die-die Obi-Wan Kenobi bandwagon and all of that.

I don't show up with expectations. Other than expecting to have fun, expecting to see a good story, I'm ready to be amazed and that's just it. I do that with most of my stories. Sometimes I'll catch myself starting to expect something, and try to stop. Sometimes I manage, and those can go either way; maybe I'm surprised with something that turns out okay or maybe I'm left thinking it did suck and I should've leaned into that before hand. Sometimes I don't, and foolishly let all that slam my attempt to experience a new story and it usually ends in chaos for me.

This didn't used to be a big problem, fan backlash, and I don't think it's because social media didn't exist. It's because there was such a dearth of content. A movie might come out, or a (low budget) show, but then that was often it. Even Indiana Jones, which both Lucas and Spielberg envisioned from day one as a serial cliffhanger kind of thing, still only had three movies over about a decade and then stopped. And that was a bit of an exception, since usually creators didn't revisit stuff but instead moved onto other stories.

Hollywood used to consider sequels a horrible idea. Obviously, that thinking has changed. But it's created this problem where people are familiar enough with (whatever it is) that they can form expectations. And now you have several generations who've taught themselves how to expect stuff from movies and shows.

Which is what you see when trailers drop now. People "analyze" it and go on about "well they're obviously gonna do this, and they're ignoring that, and this guy and that girl are involved in this thing" and all that. But they use these guesses, these expectations, to scream and yell about how fucking wrong the creators are for not just having psychically listened to "the fans" and "done it right."

Why not just watch the damn movie? If you don't like it, you don't like it. That's fine. But oh no, you had to invest your identity into it. Worse, you had to invest your identity into predicting and "calling" this and that, which didn't happen, so now you have to save face to your imaginary online friends by forming hate bandwagons so you can all scream about how stupid the creators are.

Everyone needs to calm down. Accept that all things aren't everything to everyone. That there's taste and shades and flavors, and some aren't to one's liking. Get over it. If you don't like it, just don't watch. No, don't form a bandwagon, rally people to "the cause"; that's lame and juvenile and just makes one look stupid.

Except there's several generations of other people who are just like that too, and you all have to be right. Even when one's not. On those occasions, they all band together and feed each others' ego about how right they are and how wrong creators are and how everything should just be exactly the way they expect it should be.

Which is the opposite of what story is all about. Story is something that takes you to places far, far away, long, long ago. It transports you from the harsh reality of today, where evil always wins and the little guy is eternally crushed. In story, good can still prevail and evil can be punished, and it makes life a little more bearable.

That's the only thing I expect from stories. I think if more people would just be willing to amazed, rather than sitting down expecting something, they might have more fun. And, if nothing else, there'd probably be less stupid screaming about something that's supposed to be fun.

Because that's what story is ultimately about. Fun.

Nice write-up. The terminology you've established here is clear and persuasive as a foundation for further discussion. You've implied but not explicitly stated that the categories you've established can be placed on a spectrum: perhaps two axes, perhaps Postmodern Conservatism as an x-value and Postmodern Reactionism as a y-value.

This graphical representation probably reveals an interesting distribution. I would be very curious to see useful data represented in such a format: what do we expect the correlation to be? More importantly, which points in the plane are densest? I wonder if the relationship is lopsided in some way.

It would also be worthwhile to identify correlations between the aforementioned values in groups: say, medium or genre. How do different fandoms engage with variously purist or orthodox and radical or heterodox (I was going to say avant-garde; though in a world where art blends with copyright, "recusant" seems more fitting) additions, changes, or interpretations of their franchise(s)? Certainly a bit of this work has already been done, but not necessarily with the level of granularity I'm curious about.

Anecdotally and qualitatively, it's pretty easy to identify that some fan communities have different approaches to what's "real" and what's "good" than others. Part of this seems to relate to the quality of the work itself: whether new additions to a franchise are treated with care, perhaps, or if existing material is rudely upended. It's evident that many people inform their sense of "care" by subconsciously evaluating whether changes have either corporate or woke (or whatever) undertones, then basing their opinion of the production process on that perception. Whether or not the original author was involved in the new work certainly influences this. However, I don't think everyone reacts so politically to media. I might summarize these positions collectively as desiring respect for an original work more than desiring any particular idea, entity, or theme be represented.

Personally, I think it's possible for a new addition to a franchise to have a somewhat or even radically different take than any preexisting material and do so with "respect." For example, I really like every Mad Max movie even though none of them have anything near the same tone as one another and there are too many inconsistencies to count. But of course, these were all still made by the same director, and it would be hard to say that a director is "disrespecting" their own old material. As perhaps a better example, many Shakespeare adaptions I enjoy have historically inaccurate sets (as a tame example, Trevor Nunn's 1996 Twelfth Night, which is one of my favorites, feels late-19th or maybe very early-20th century), but they are still excellent and beloved. And you don't have to look far to see Shakespeare-lovers "respectfully" reinterpreting that playwright whose work they love in dramatic, alien, truly avant-garde ways. I've seen any number of live performances of things like The Tempest, and among the ones that feel "different," I think the best are fundamentally enthralled by the source material. The authors are taken with it. They are just enthralled... creatively, and so feel empowered to add to a literary tradition rather than desecrate a fandom's cherished work. No one is really in the "Shakespeare fandom"; and perhaps this is why people are, in general, less rageful about interpretations of great works than they are about whatever video game they grew up playing. That is, to your point, the Postmodern Tribe of fandom is hard to apply to something that is already fairly recognized as collective and interpretative (like a literary tradition that has existed for centuries among thousands of people), and much easier to apply to things that corporations have an incentive to construe as "theirs," an attitude subsequently adopted by fans. (Not to say that there aren't Shakespeare purists; there are many. But literature seems to me far more unbounded in this respect than fandoms do.)

Here's another open question: what does it mean for a fandom about source material whose themes and messages are meant to be radical to act as "purists" or postmodernly conservative about said material? I've engaged for a long time with wikis about The Elder Scrolls, a series which has historically experimented with the notion of "canon" in an interactive medium (see: C0DA, which attempts to deconstruct the concept). The irony of prescriptively drawing lines in the sand about what part of this fairly postmodern series counts as canonical is not lost on me, whether that's copyright licensing (for some wikis) or kinda-copyright-kinda-feelings (for other wikis) or "whoever gets there first" (for fanon wikis). I have consistently been amused by the purist stalwarts, but I recognize that any position in this paradigm is ultimately subjective.

I think this overcomplicates something that's at heart dirt simple. The analysis of the fan interaction is on point surely, but are we all certain that isn't just the consequence of the way algorithms recommend entertainment? They love to book the fight, so to speak, and are not innocent in this mess.

The basic plots of our now zombie franchises are, no joke, far less adult and intelligent overall than the cartoons I watched on Saturday morning back in the 80s. That's not hyperbole, that's fact - go watch the He-Man / She-Ra crossover five part movie sometime, and you'll find all the plot, character, and world building that's missing from post-covid entertainment. Thundercats had their fair share of multi-part episodes, so did Transformers. These are children's cartoons that contain objectively better storytelling than Star Wars, Rings of Power, and so on - from a half century ago. What the fuck happend, and isn't that the real question?

Watching a modern writing team try to adapt Star Wars or Lord of the Rings is rather like watching a pack of howler monkeys try to pilot a star ship. They just aren't mentally capable, period. This leads to not-story bullshit like 'feels' and 'inclusiveness' being more important than meaningful storytelling structure, which means the plot is trash to anyone with a positive IQ. It's good entertainment for kids whose brains aren't all there yet, but adults are going to roll their eyes and tune out. Modern television runs on the power of convenient coincidences, which is writing I'd fire someone for instantly. Get better or pick a new profession.

This is I think why they are so desperate to 'mine franchises for IP' as Kurtzman put it. The name recognition alone is the only reason these tepid franchise entries get any press or air time, and they are never ever what they claim to be. Hollywood is bankrupting itself with rancid fan fiction, and as they continue to bleed money there's going to be an awful lot less of this crap out there - thank god.

I think Foundation makes a good example. There were no guns and protagonists fighting, and yet the show is full of it, along with character actions that not only weren't in the books, they are actions the characters in the books would never ever do. In fact some of the things the characters in the show do are intentionally the exact opposite of what the same character does in the books. Why exactly is it even legal for them to falsely advertise this as the 'Foundation' series when it has only nouns in common with it? Call it 'Empire' and lift all the inspiration from Foundation you like, just don't call it Foundation or we are going to have a problem. The only thing a bad adaptation is capable of doing is assassinating the character of the original work, effectively censoring it. Some people think that's the point but I'm not ready to attribute it to malice instead of industrial-levels of stupidity just yet.

None of these writers are even fit to shine Asimov's shoes, and yet we're forced to watch his work get subverted and trashed by lesser minds writing juvenile stories. That will piss off every single fan of the books. It's false advertising, shit writing, and hubris on the part of the companies that pay these clowns to run their adaptions for them. Your post, while thought provoking, strikes me as a lot of gymnastics to avoid recognizing this simple basic fact of adopting properties.

They'd be better off launching these properties they create as original series, rather than passing them off as properties that they actively insult by existing in the first place. Then there's no reason for the fighting, because there's no comparison to a prior, bestselling, beloved property that has stood the test of time with multiple generations running. I maintain the reason they continue to do this is because they know that no one is going to watch their crap without the name recognition. It's simply not good enough to make a name for itself on its own, unlike the original masterworks they are basically ripping off for views which earned their popularity by being, you know, good.

I say this as someone who only gives the original Lord of the Rings trilogy an 8/10 as an adaptation, so you have some idea where my own standards are. I dig it, but I won't call it a great adaptation, just a good one. I don't miss Bombadil, but I did miss The Scouring and I'm docking them points for leaving out the part of the book that drives all of the themes in it home. Perhaps everyone has forgotten Xen-Arwen showing up at Helm's Deep - the backlash against that got it cut from the finished films because unlike most modern producers, Peter Jackson had the brains to listen to his fans customers. That's why we all have the special editions sitting on our DVD shelves. I won't be putting 'Rings of Power' on that shelf, that's for sure.

Take the latest Fallout adaptation. Everything in it is a 9/10 except the plot, which once again can't stand up to a moment's analysis. It's just an ever escalating collection of 'cool' scenes the writers thought up, with no muscle to stitch it all together and none of it making sense. It got by on ferret shock and member berries alone. It is not a great piece of art, and people will not be talking about it several decades hence. That is certainly not what Todd and Amazon wanted, but it's what they got, because they didn't vet their writing team and hire competent writers to handle the adaptation.

They are happy with a silly Fallout-themed soap opera. What's the point in even making a show if you aren't going for the brass ring, anyway? Where's the commitment to making good art? Do we just excuse every crummy decision in every show and pretend they are all great? If that's the case you'll probably love the coming era of 99% AI-written/produced content, with GPT-Omega spitting out ten series a minute. I know that a GPT can come up with better stories than this drek even now. :P

I really think they have set themselves up for the dissolution of the industry as we know it. Kids with AI tools can and will create better original stories than this, and that wave of new media is undoubtedly going to come with dozens of new creations that don't have this adaptation malaise and still knock their fresh world building and their storytelling out of the park.

As for the reactionary stuff, well, we know how the algorithms love to mine outrage - it's the one single thing they've been programmed to do since they were created. That opens up financial opportunities for new critics and other voices who get to make money that hollywood left on the table by being utterly abysmal at their jobs. If the show isn't enjoyable, there's good money to be made MST3K'ing the piss out of it. I look at it as recycling a property you wouldn't even bother with into at least one evening's entertainment lampooning it for the trash it is. If these properties were good, this sort of content would have no views and generate no money. They aren't, and so it does. Yay capitalism. :P

I suppose the point I want to illustrate is this - these stories are objectively bad under any level of analysis. Let's not lose sight of the fact that it's all polish on turds, and justifications for why those stinkers are somehow magically better than they appear to be, and should be given an apologist's kid-gloves treatment rather than a scathing literary critique. I invite anyone to imagine what Siskel and Ebert would have to say about anything released in the last decade.

Take a look at the original plot lines, universes, and stories in manga, and ask yourself why manga is making more money than hollywood lately. The simple fact is, tinseltown is now creatively bankrupt, and the numbers bear that out more with every release and each passing day.

I can only presume that it is somehow a taboo to pin blame the writers for failing miserably at their jobs. That is the totality of the entire problem right there. Having everything written by committees filling out forms and check boxes (the norm now) is clearly doing their creative works no favors. We don't need a committee to cook a meal, and we don't need one to write a story either. Too many line order cooks, not enough Chefs.

I'd send a bad dish right back at a restaurant, and I have the same reaction when I pay for Lord of the Rings and get Rings of Power. This isn't what I ordered, and I couldn't give a damn about the Chef's opinion - I'm the one who has to eat this meal, and I'm ultimately the one paying for it, which makes me the boss. That's not up for debate or other opinions. I'm not going to argue with the Chef, either - I'm going to find other, better restaurants who give me what I order and spend my money there.

Just my take on the mess. I do have one other interesting observation, though... the reactionary channels out there are missing a golden opportunity by just focusing on the negative. Their primary mission should be to find new, good content and get the word out about it, rather than focusing exclusively on the missteps of the major properties. That's fun, but it's not really productive. They should be reviewing comics from patreon, films from overseas, manga, anime, indie games - anything that's got a quality shine on it. The best way to kill the stupid is to provide a pile of superior content, and get the money going into better hands.

Y'all are referencing postmodernism a lot, and I'm curious what exactly you mean by that? Especially in the context of identities and fandom?