Complaining: Misaimed Fandom

I've gone through some of this trope's subpages, and I can't help but feel that a lot of them are writen in a sort of condescending, passive-aggressive manner. Like, the trope description tries to avoid this, stating that neither ignoring canon nor treating it like it can only be interpreted one way are good, and that sometimes the creator is just bad at conveying the mesage. But it seems some people still use the trope to vent their frustrations about wichever theory or headcanon they disagree with.

From the Video Games subpage:

• Final Fantasy
  • Some fans of Final Fantasy IV prefer Cecil as a Dark Knight and wish he stayed that way instead of becoming a Paladin. Statistically, Dark Knight Cecil is generally inferior to Paladin Cecil. Second, Cecil is no more badass as a Dark Knight (in fact, it's when he becomes a Paladin when he begins to gain confidence and retaliate against the enemy). Third, Evil Is Cool and Draco in Leather Pants don't even apply here since Cecil was never evil in the first place, just misguided. Finally, him staying as a Dark Knight is missing the point of the game; Cecil is The Atoner. The whole point is for him to change from what he was in his past and become a better person. This is not helped by Dissidia: Final Fantasy, in which Cecil wields both classes cheerfully, without much regard to the fact that in Final Fantasy IV, Cecil hated being a Dark Knight and it was portrayed as a self-destructive path that led to misery and pain.

Of these four "arguments", only the last one is related to the trope at hand, and the troper who wrote this didn't consider that some people may disagree with "you can only become a good person if you stop being a Dark Knight".

• Pokémon:
  • As mentioned on the Anime and Manga page, there's the ever-lasting debate between Red (the protagonist of first set of games), and Ash Ketchum (the anime's main protagonist). Generally, people side with Red, because he's cooler and smarter than the dumb-as-a-rock Ash. There's a few problems with this, though; first off, Ash has done a lot of things that Red has not, a lot of which are impressive in their own right. Second, Red and Ash are pretty much the same guy, with Ash being Red if Red had an actual personality. For that matter, there's the final flaw in the argument: with Red being the player's character, of course he can be more awesome than Ash, you can do whatever you want with him. Guess some of those fans are purposefully seeing him as Wish Fulfillment?... Regardless, Red fans see Red as perfect, completely ignoring that Ash isn't bad and straight-up rejecting these facts.

This is basically a solid wall of complaining that has nothing to do with the trope. Misaimed Fandom is supposed to be about fans missing the point or intended message of a work. Since when has the point of Pokémon been that Red is not better than Ash?

Two works in one (can you even do that?)

• A handful of fans like to view cross dressing characters, primarily Naoto Shirogane and Chihiro Fujisaki, as good representations of Transsexual characters in fiction and some would even constantly insist they are Trans in canon despite Word of God remarking on how they are not. The issue here is that, while having head canons that they are Trans is perfectly fine, characters like Naoto and Chihiro were never intended or written to be Trans in canon. In fact, their characters and problems do not necessarily reflect the LGBT community in Japan in any way. Instead they were meant to be seen as representations of how strict and unfair gender roles and standards in Japan are. Like how a woman like Naoto wouldn't be taken seriously in a male dominated field in addition to being considered too young for her work. Or how a physically and emotionally frail male like Chihiro would be constantly shamed and bullied for being too weak for people's taste.

Some transgender fans may agree with the work's original message, but they still chose to interpret certain characters as trans because they want to see themselves reflected in a work they like. Also, the line in bold (emphasis mine) is nonsensical. Very often, the whole point of a headcanon is that they are things people want to believe even if nothing sugests them in canon.

Here's another example from the Webcomics subpage:

• One of the major themes in Homestuck is that everything is predestined, and that going against what's meant to happen will only result in disaster. It's been established in the comic that the kids the story follows are the only ones who will play Sburb and survive - any of the other kids who got the game will be doomed to failure when the meteors come because they aren't the ones who are supposed to play. And yet, fanfics and roleplay that take place in a Sburb session with entirely new human or troll kids are hugely popular. At least some of them make up a new species for the players to be first, but the vast majority of them don't.

...this is just dumb. Why sould fanfics limit themselves to events that happen within the work? There is such as thing as alternate universe fics, after all.

Finally, what that drove me to go thorugh some of the subpages to see how bad the other examples were. This is in the YMMW page of {{17776}}:

• Misaimed Fandom: Beneath the surface, the story is a satire on sports culture, the lack of safety in real world football and how players have gotten hurt due to it, and on mankind's pursuit of play once work becomes unnecessary or undesired. However, due to many people being drawn in for the narrative and not the football aspect, many tend to read for the satellites and their antics and not the satire. Some people have gone as far as to ask why football is at the center of the story and why the world isn't being built more.

This paragraph criticises the reason people read a story. Does this mean that, if you just happen to not be ineterested in football, you're missing the whole point of the story? And there is no link to the creator confirming what the point was in the first place.

...sorry, that came out a bit salty. Do you think this is worth taking a closer look at?

edited 24th Jul '17 3:18:43 PM by Nazo

Opening.

I do think that the examples need to be rewritten to get rid of the complaining.

How about making it trivia for cases where a creator acknowledges that some people are interpreting their work wrong or they got audience from the their work they didn't intend? Cause right now examples for this thing are basically putting words in creator's mouths.

Locking per New Year Purge.