The only question I
Ever thought was hard
Is 'Do I like Kirk
Or do I like Picard?'
A
broken base is a civil war among fans of a particular series. It usually involves fighting over whether or not the series is still good after a certain change. The loyalists believe it's as good as ever (maybe even better) and constantly hold up its merits. The dissenters feel betrayed by declining quality, and attack the series at every opportunity. They'll also be annoyed by the other fans' loyalty, and will call them blind fanboys / fangirls. However, despite not liking the show anymore, the dissenters will linger around fan forums
solely to criticize the show and the loyalists. The loyalists will reply by calling the dissenters a bunch of fuddy-duddies who
go all Chicken Little at the slightest change to the status quo.
Another common source of a broken base is when the interpretation of the series events or characters varies so immensely that it seems as if there are two different shows being watched by two different fanbases. Sometimes this can happen because of a deliberate attempt to appeal to a
periphery demographic whose interpretations will be directly at odds with the primary demographic (
yaoi fangirls of
shounen are a common example). Usually the periphery demographic is too small to really break the base, but if it's as large as the primary demographic, arguments can become rather passionate.
Almost every series has at least some internal conflict amongst its fanbase. In fact, a healthy series should have some polite dissent within its fanbase, as that creates a ground for respectful debate and thoughtful discussion. However, in many, if not most, cases, the amount of dissent is far above this level.
Often caused by the conflict between
Word Of God vs
Word of Dante. At its most extreme, it leads to
Death Of The Author, especially if
the author was never really reliable in the first place..
This trope can apply to fans of ongoing works in any medium and any genre.
See Also:
Fandom Heresy,
They Changed It, Now It Sucks,
Internet Backdraft,
Replacement Scrappy. Also see
Base Breaker for if one character is the cause of it all.
Overlaps with
Fan Hater,
Love It or Hate It,
Unpleasable Fanbase,
Opinion Myopia,
Alternate Character Interpretation and maybe even
Pop Culture Isolation.
Unrelated to
Broken Pedestal.
Examples go in subpages:
