Examples of Misaimed Fandom for other works.
Art
- William Blake's "Newton
", due to its "heroic" style, is widely misinterpreted as an approving depiction of Isaac Newton (eg in the three-dimensional sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi inspired by it). In fact, the anti-materialist and mystically Christian Blake intended the work as a caricature mocking Newton for paying attention to insignificant things on Earth when he should have been thinking about his immortal soul.note This is made clear by the engraving's original subtitle, Personification of Man Limited by Reason.
Articles
- This very wiki is in itself an example, as well as having multiple other examples, as it originally started out documenting tropes in television. However, it didn't take long for people to start making pages for non-television-related media, eventually getting to the point where the wiki just officially adopted it.
- The point of TV Tropes is to be an education tool. Tropes are tools, and the wiki is largely designed to help budding writers understand and use those tools. That, however, has not stopped some people from believing that the use of any trope is inherently bad and lacks originality, using the wiki to list all the things inherently wrong with a trope in question. For example, despite multiple clean up attempts, Freudian Excuse often ends up sliding back into being one long rant about the trope in question and why no one should ever use it.
- The infamous cry of "We're not Wikipedia!" Is often used by disgruntled Tropers over the perceived lost of wit and hilarity of TV Tropes over the years. The thing is, while there was always more wit involved than Wikipedia's by the book explanations, TV Tropes was never intended to be a full on meta-roasting of the works in question like, say, the Transformers wiki is. Not to mention most of the wit in the early years tended to descend into thinly veiled complaining about the tropes/works in questions, despite this being explicitly against the site's rules.
- Self-Demonstrating Character Pages, a type of Just for Fun page on this very wiki where characters describe themselves in first person using their signature speech patterns, were born from misunderstanding the point of our Deadpool article. Deadpool's page was written as if Deadpool himself was narrating, because one of the character's defining characteristics is how he has No Fourth Wall, so the idea was that if he addresses the readers in the comic books, it's only natural that he would do the same on his TV Tropes page. Then people proceeded to miss the joke when the style caught on, and as a result there are many pages dedicated to individual Marvel and DC characters that are written with No Fourth Wall, even if the character in question doesn't behave as such. Then it proceeded to extend into different works entirely, some missing the joke by an even wider margin, as characters with actual Fourth Wall attunement are missed out in favor of others. And even if you think that just describing a character using that character's "voice" can still be interesting, that joke was itself missed by an even wider margin when tropers started creating pages for any characters they like, even if they didn't have interesting speech patterns. Fortunately, most (hopefully all) of the "uninteresting" pages were deleted.
- Video Examples, an addition to TV Tropes have a rating system to determine whether a video is a good example of a trope. Despite this, you can also find people giving low or high ratings based simply on not liking or loving the source. See this page for an example.
- The Tropes Are Tools page describes how tropes aren't inherently good or bad. Whenever it's potholed to in a trope example, it's always to defend a trope's presence in that one specific work, which implies that any other example of the trope (that doesn't also include a pothole to Tropes are Tools) is inherently bad. (More rarely, it's also used to imply that a specific work is bad despite including that trope, or would be better without it, which implies the opposite, that this trope is inherently good.) In short, a page about how complaining or gushing about the presence of certain tropes in works is wrong ended up being used to do exactly that.
Asian Animation
- Rumor has it that Squirrel and Hedgehog is meant to bash and demonize the United States in favor of North Korea, but you'd never guess that. The Americans, portrayed by badass wolves armed with Ray Guns and Glowing Eyes of Doom, are five different kinds of awesome compared to the North Koreans who are portrayed by wimpy little rodents. The Big Bad Lt.Col Fox Vixen is also popular enough, particularly with the Furry Fandom, to have spawned an entire slew of fan art from Americans praising her. The explanation given is due to Values Dissonance; Americans love seeing themselves portrayed as fearsome, stoic and mighty wolves, whilst North Koreans center a lot of their cultural identity around being innocent, meek and peace-loving souls tormented by big, powerful bullies, as a result of government propaganda. Not only that, the "innocent, meek and peace-loving souls tormented by big, powerful bullies" setup mainly works if the victims have the moral high ground, something that the Flower Hill (North Korea) residents clearly lack.
Fan Works
- The Conversion Bureau was written to explain fic writer Blaze's hypothesis on why Equestria had no humans, as well as being Wish-Fulfillment. Due to his lack of experience as a writer, the story came off as incredibly misanthropic. The mixture of the backlash Blaze received as well as his waning interest in the story rendered it a Dead Fic. However, other authors came into the scene to write their own Recursive Fanfictions based off TCB, taking the basic framework of the story to espouse their Humans Are the Real Monsters views. This is despite the fact that the only reason that TCB had such a message was due to lack of skill by the original writer in presenting an idea, not intentional misanthropy.
- The Deconstruction Fic The Conversion Bureau runs and Grey-and-Grey Morality, which seems to be lost on some of the readers. Standouts include:
- Defending the humans putting ponies into internment camps. The author has said in comments that they're supposed to be an unjustified, kneejerk reaction motivated by racism and paranoia.
- Wanting to see Equestria glassed. They don't get their wish.
- Wanting to see all of humanity ponified and brought under the control of the Equestrian Diarchy. They don't get their wish either.
- The Deconstruction Fic The Conversion Bureau runs and Grey-and-Grey Morality, which seems to be lost on some of the readers. Standouts include:
- Friendship is Optimal is a Cosmic Horror Story about an AI promising "satisfy everybody's values through friendship and ponies" and taking it to horrifying extremes. People still interpreted it as Wish-Fulfillment.
- Some readers see The Good Hunter as a Characters Dropping Like Flies type of story, where the Hunter wipes out the Mamono and subjugates The Order. In addition, Word of God admits that he received complaints about him "characterising the monsters too much". He has stated that the aforementioned points are not intended — The Good Hunter is supposed to be a story where the Hunter is humanised instead of a cookie cutter Blood Knight, and that the monsters are written as people, rather than mere beasts to be slain. Tellingly, within the story, the Hunter would rather not draw his blade on non-hostile people, and that several monsters are main characters. To top it off, the SpaceBattles.com snippets, which take place after the main storyline, reveal that both The Order and the Monster Lord are still operating.
- At least one other fic writer has quoted Hands (OMORI) for Sunny/Mari purposes, which scitydreamer was absolutely not pleased about since this fic is meant to show the relationship as predatory. The tags attempt to shut this down by warning Sunny/Mari shippers to not interact with the author.
- While the author of Scarlet Lady isn't afraid to explore Chloé's Freudian Excuse more than canon did, she's made it repeatedly clear that this is not a redemption fic: Chloé is going to stay antagonistic for its entirety. Despite this, there's still plenty of people who come into it expecting Chloé to be redeemed in some fashion, and who promptly complain to the author when they realize they're wrong.
Software
- Flask was originally created as a parody of similar web frameworks, implementing every bad design decision from other frameworks that the author could think of. He was quite surprised to learn that some people actually liked it, and asked him for the source code so that they could expand it.
Theme Parks
- Action Park was notorious for its lax safety standards, which eventually led to it shutting down in 1996 under a tide of lawsuits. People were attracted to the park because of its unsafe rides, seeing it less as an Amusement Park of Doom and more an Amusement Park of Badassery, such that it became a Cult Classic among New Jerseyans who bemoaned its eventual fate. Nostalgia for the park led to its replacement on the property, Mountain Creek Waterpark, being briefly renamed Action Park from 2014 through 2016, and a Very Loosely Based on a True Story film called Action Point being made by a number of Jackass alumni in 2018.
Visual Novels
- With Ace Attorney:
- In Dual Destinies, there's some people who are incredibly pissed off about the reveal where it turns out The Phantom is impersonating Bobby Fulbright, and the real Fulbright's been dead since before the game. These people are failing to realize that that's exactly what it's supposed to feel like. The Phantom played you for a fool, and made you trust him completely, only for it turn out he's not even the person he says he is. That anger you feel deep down at that plot twist? It was intentional.
- Amnesia: Memories gets hit with this, likely due to a case of No Export for You, since the other games of the series have, so far, not been localized to the western market. This particularly hits hard because Amnesia: Later has after stories depicting the relationships after the Good Endings, often showing repercussions and consequences of actions taken during Amnesia: Memories.
- Some western players found the boyfriends to be horrible characters, despite the entire point of their routes and Good Ending dealing with the fact that they are not as they initially appear to be. Shin may look like a bad boy, but his appearance belies that he's really got good intentions behind his harsh words. Ikki gets labeled as nothing but a playboy, when his route shows that he's sick and tired of being labeled a playboy by everyone else, and really wants to find a meaningful relationship with one person and even settle down. Kent and Toma are their own little misaimed fandom.
- Kent's lack of social skills and extremely rational outlook on life rubs people the wrong way, citing that his relationship with the heroine is terrible and that they should break up. Some players didn't realize that Kent's entire route was one big deconstruction of the Belligerent Sexual Tension trope seen in a lot of romances in media. The game has characters admit that their relationship was likely doomed to failure because their differences, and refusal to attempt to see eye-to-eye, made both of them unhappy. Kent trying to open up and be more open about his emotions towards the heroine, as well as her own stubborn stance about not being honest herself, was necessary for them to even begin having open conversations with each other.
- Toma gets knocked a lot for turning out to be a yandere that locks the heroine away, with many players even claiming that's his whole personality. Even thinking of him as someone who enjoys and would go through with his attempt at raping the heroine. Toma is not supposed to be seen as sympathetic in his endeavors, but also not be quickly shrugged off. He's not happy with how he acted towards the heroine and is deeply ashamed of it.
- Danganronpa:
- Fans often tend to believe that the Ultimates are gifted people, the best in their area and that for having talent, they are above the normal students. This goes counter to one of the main themes of the game, particularly Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, that one's worth is not necessarily defined by talent or lack thereof. Some Free Time events show the various Ultimates connecting with Makoto Naegi (the Ultimate Lucky Student) or Hajime Hinata (who has no Ultimate talent at all) more easily than most of their Ultimate classmates, simply because those two are more normal, and it's noted that the Ultimates tend to fall back on their talents in desperate situations (most of the murders involve the culprits using their talent). Near the end of the second game, Hajime, after learning that his desire for a talent led to him becoming Izuru Kamukura and essentially causing the events that led to the collapse of civilization, realizes that self-confidence is most important of all, enabling him to save the day and live on as himself, an outcome he is happy with.
- The main character seeing the world in this light is Nagito Komaeda, who gets continuously crazier and crazier through the game and plays a later part of the game as an antagonist, even trying to kill everybody in chapter 5. Outside of him, you have the very Hope's Peak Academy, which was responsible for laying out the ground for Junko to cause The Tragedy. They treated the Reserve Students as useless cash cows, spent insane amount of money on the Main Course, of which the students were not even asked to participate the class, as long as they still had their talents, they covered up murders, genocides and bombings caused by students, who often got minimum punishment for it and created Izuru Kamukura, by injecting talents on a normal student until he became devoid of empathy for humans and was easily used by Junko as a killing machine.
- From the first game, Chihiro Fujisaki's earned fans by being seen as a deliberate Wholesome Crossdresser rather than a disguise created to avoid bullying, and that his feminine features should be embraced because of it. It gets to the point where they consider him a "girlfriend" character of sorts or interpret him as trans, ignoring that he'd like to improve himself on his own merits instead of continually living a lie. The implications of him needing to keep this facade because his natural girlniness makes him not a "real" man ignores his character arc. In fairness, this probably isn't helped by the fact that supplementary material never seems to put him in boys' clothes (possibly to maintain the twist and avoid spoiling newcomers).
- There are those who actually agree with the Hope's Peak Saga's Big Bad, Junko Enoshima, with their "Burn it all down" attitude being cited as the primary reason considering all the corruption Hope's Peak has pulled. Junko's looks and natural charisma are also contributing factors, even though the reason she ended up torching the system was because she was bored. She's good at analyzing what pieces of the Disaster Dominoes should lead to what, sure, but even she tells her classmates in her last living moments that there's nothing about her that remotely deserves any praise or sympathy.
- Some believe Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is an insult to the fandom, due to numerous Take That, Audience! remarks to the in-universe viewers and the end goal of ending Danganronpa in-universe is a sign they just want the franchise to end. The development has said this wasn't the case and the nature of the player and the in-universe audience was supposed to simply be on a similar level.
- Fans often tend to believe that the Ultimates are gifted people, the best in their area and that for having talent, they are above the normal students. This goes counter to one of the main themes of the game, particularly Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, that one's worth is not necessarily defined by talent or lack thereof. Some Free Time events show the various Ultimates connecting with Makoto Naegi (the Ultimate Lucky Student) or Hajime Hinata (who has no Ultimate talent at all) more easily than most of their Ultimate classmates, simply because those two are more normal, and it's noted that the Ultimates tend to fall back on their talents in desperate situations (most of the murders involve the culprits using their talent). Near the end of the second game, Hajime, after learning that his desire for a talent led to him becoming Izuru Kamukura and essentially causing the events that led to the collapse of civilization, realizes that self-confidence is most important of all, enabling him to save the day and live on as himself, an outcome he is happy with.
- Doki Doki Literature Club!: There are people who agree with Monika that nothing she did was wrong because she did it to fictional characters, not real people. These same people will downplay Monika's more negative traits of her being a Yandere who manipulated, gaslit, and murdered her friends, then destroyed her game's world just to get close to the player. Part of this has to do with her illustrating surprising Hidden Depths during Act 3, showing her polite demeanor wasn't entirely an act. What these fans miss is that the game clearly portrays Monika as a monster, even if there is a tragic reason behind her actions. Monika herself even realizes this once the player deletes her from the game. It's also called further into question by the ending's reveal that being meta-aware isn't a Monika-specific thing, but more something that comes with being the Club's President. Depending on which of the Multiple Endings a player gets, Sayori will start to act just as bad as Monika before she's stopped in the bad ending, or thank the player for trying to make everyone happy despite knowing they were all video game characters in the good ending. Monika is and was always meant to be in the wrong, and her stance that "it's just a video game" doesn't excuse how she acted.
- Katawa Shoujo:
- The game itself is an inversion; on hearing that a game about dating crippled girls (blind, amputees, etc) is being written by (mostly) refugees of 4chan, many reviewers are prepared to find a depressingly cruel, mocking game on par with Rapelay, instead of a fairly realistic and touching game about living with (and dating) handicaps.
- On the other hand, Word of God (word of the devblog, actually) has denied the opposite interpretation that the story is meant to be a sympathetic analysis of life with a handicap. The setting comes second to the genre (romance). The fact that they claim the handicaps are not actually the focus of the game makes it even better.
- The moral in Hanako's route is that Hanako doesn't like her crippling shyness and insecurities and wants people to see her as an equal instead of as a broken child to protect and baby. There are quite a few KS fans who love Hanako for her "adorable shyness" and get upset at Hisao for his and Hanako's first time going so wrong, despite the fact that Hanako was the one who initiated it. The fact that Hisao has a brief Heroic BSoD upon mistakenly believing that he forced Hanako into sex and Hanako has to clear up that he didn't rape her should say, uh, something.
- Similarly, the fact that Shizune is really asocial and straightforward to the point of bluntness makes people believe that she raped Hisao in Their First Time.
- In Type Moon works:
- A theme that head writer Nasu uses quite often is the idea that we all have darkness within ourselves. You still get a little agitated when you think of something thoughtless that your friend did years ago. You feel that the girl you like should have gone with you instead of that other guy. You have an old grudge towards one of your relatives. Your acquaintances all have little flaws that annoy you. And so on and so forth. But you keep all of this under wraps, because you realize that you're being irrational and petty. Besides, those little annoyances are insignificant next to how much you care about this person. But what happens when you're possessed by a supernatural power and forced to act on all of these dark urges? Suffice to say, none of us would be good people. Nasu has used this with no less than four characters, and two of them have detractors that center their bashing around said character's actions while in this state, despite the fact that they would never behave that way normally, and even after Nasu had spent the better part of the story beating them over the head with the concept.
- The Tsukihime fandom often fails to understand Kohaku's character, despite it being spelled out in black and white. She masked her emotions and detached herself from the world around her in response to being abused as a child. She took on the cheerful persona in response to her formerly cheerful sister becoming mopey and reserved. Kohaku's cheerful personality gradually became her real personality without her realizing it. The Kohaku that we see is the real Kohaku, and always has been. She formulated a plan to get the Tohnos to kill each other not because she was angry, but because she thought that it was what a normal person would do. She is not a vengeful sadist who would randomly murder your family because she likes seeing you squirm, nor does Kohaku wear a Mask of Sanity where she's secretly a sociopath.
