Fandom Life Cycle cleanup

While going through Fandom Life Cycle I noticed many oddities. While some are undebatable, like Arthur and The Beatles being at Stage 5, others are kind of debatable, if not entirely inaccurate, or they need to be updated.

There are also many zero-context examples on the page.

Under the Anime & Manga folder:

• Pokémon: A rare case of the show premiering at Stage 5, as it was a sales juggernaut during the anime boom of the late 90s/early 00s, to the point it introduced anime to an entire generation, surprisingly reaching mainstream status very quickly. Later seasons struggled to maintain the hype with how popular it was depending on the direction, with Advance Generation and Diamond and Pearl reaching Stage 3 or 4, while Johto, Best Wishes, and Sun and Moon were Stage 6a. X and Y ended at Stage 6b. Leagues usually end with the anime sitting on Stage 6b for a few weeks before returning to Stage 3 for the next series.

Needs to be updated after Journeys ended.

Under the Puppet Shows folder:

• Noggin's original series, such as Jack's Big Music Show, Oobi, Play With Me Sesame, and The Upside Down Show are at Stage 2. The Upside Down Show, in particular, was burned off in the fall of 2006, and in 2007 the show was announced to have been cancelled after only one season.

All of these shows are extremely obscure. I have never even heard of Jack's Big Music Show or Play With Me Sesame in my life, and I bet most people haven't even heard of Oobi or The Upside Down Show, let alone the other two shows (I do vaguely remember watching Oobi and TUDS as a kid but can't tell you a single thing about them except maybe Oobi's character design). There doesn't even seem to be any real "fandom" for these shows from what I can tell.

• Bear in the Big Blue House was at Stage 4 during its run on Playhouse Disney. It is currently at Stage X thanks to its release on Disney+.

How does a show getting released on a streaming service cause it to enter Stage X status? Even some shows that are extremely obscure are still released on streaming services. Even though Dragon Tales was added to Amazon Prime in August of 2022, it didn't have this massive Stage X explosion because of it.

Also, i'd argue that the show peaked at Stage 5. It was incredibly successful and lasted almost a decade. It was absolutely massive in the late 90s and early-mid 2000s. I used to love the show as a kid and I bet a ton of people did too.

Under the Western Animation folder:

• The Wacky Adventures Of Ronald Mc Donald was originally at Stage 3. Each video was only available for a limited time at McDonald's, but was offered to customers who purchased a Happy Meal or an ice cream cone, depending on the location. Because of this, the videos quickly sold out. Now the series is at Stage 6a, as videos 4-6 were barely advertised and sold poorly. The sixth and final video, "The Monster O' McDonaldland Loch", only being available on Klasky-Csupo's website in limited quantities and becoming lost media didn't help.

I don't really know, I have just about never seen anyone else talk about this show, and 6a is more for shows that used to be big that kind of cooled down but not enough to be lower than Stage 2. From just how forgotten it is, Stage 6c would probably fit better.

Speaking of Dragon Tales...

• Dragon Tales peaked at Stage 5. It was massive in the 2000s, with a stage show running for 4 years, 78 episodes from 1999-2005 and Cassie making two appearances at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2000 and 2001. Today it's at Stage 6a, somewhat a mix of Stage 2 and 3; while not exactly obscure, it isn't quite as well-remembered as other PBS Kids shows like Arthur and Clifford, and it hasn't been rerun since 2010. Neverless, many people still remember the series fondly - particularly those in the Millennial and older Generation Z cohorts.

While I added this in myself, i'm honestly not really sure if the series even has a fanbase or if it's just faded into obscurity. I don't really see the show being talked about much anymore, unlike Clifford and Arthur which are both iconic.

Dragon Tales is sort of like Cyberchase, which despite running for 20 years is rather obscure to the general public, and most people don't even know it's still airing new episodes.

And unlike that show, Dragon Tales isn't airing new episodes anymore, and it isn't even airing reruns at all. After it stopped airing in 2010, it was almost immediately forgotten by the general public, as if it had never existed at all. Does a fanbase for Dragon Tales even exist anymore? If people even bring up the series at all, it's pretty much a reference to the theme song - almost no one knows anything about the series itself (even with Cyberchase, most people remember things about it other than it's theme song).

• Star vs. the Forces of Evil peaked around Stage 4 with the premiere of "The Battle for Mewni." After the lackluster third and fourth seasons, the fandom seems to have gone to Stage 6b, if not 6c.

This seems to be a massive stretch of the truth. While those seasons don't seem to be well-liked, Star Vs is definitely not obscure by any means, and the fanbase still seems to be (fairly) active today. Stage 6c is for shows that have been completely forgotten after being relatively popular, and Star Vs is not one of those extremely obscure Canadian series like, say, Captain Flamingo or Stickin' Around that disappeared from the face of the earth.

• Pig Goat Banana Cricket is stuck at Stage 6c, due to being highly criticized for its ugly art style, gross-out humor, and Nickelodeon screwing it over during its run.

While I do agree with the show being 6c (it is NEVER brought up anymore), I don't really think the description does a good job of explaining why it's obscure, other than that it was screwed over by Nick.

• Blazing Dragons is stuck at Stage 2 as of now, but the #BDRevolution movement has been trying to get the series bumped up to Stage X.

I have literally never heard of this show, and the "movement" doesn't exist - it's literally one guy posting the hashtag in the span of quite a long time - almost a decade at this point - but not at all a movement. I don't hear anyone else ever talk about the show.

Some of the descriptions for the stages are weird, too.

For Stage 5, the description mentions that "The work becomes sufficiently ingrained in contemporary culture for even the people not familiar with it to know a lot about it, technically turning everyone into a fan."

This is outright not true. There are some pieces of media that are extremely well known but are almost universally hated, to the point that a fanbase seemingly doesn't even exist - such as Caillou. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who actually likes it - and yet the show is extremely well-known by almost everyone. If we're talking about the fandom for Caillou, it may as well be Stage 0/1 as it seemingly doesn't even exist - but if we're talking about how well-known it is, Caillou is definitely at Stage 5.

Stage 0 is described as "Obscurity. The work has just begun publication and/or is relatively unknown. Works released outside of the mainstream will likely remain here forever."

I'm not sure what specifically counts as mainstream, but there are some older works - like the aforementioned Captain Flamingo or the Third Eye Blind song "Anything" - that are so obscure, there doesn't seem to be any fanbase for them whatsoever, and just about nobody in the general public knows what they are, despite having been seen in the mainstream before (Captain Flamingo was aired on Jetix in the US and "Anything" was a radio single that was played on the radio in 1999 to promote Blue).

With the BITBBH example in mind, Stage X seems to also be kind of misused.

I've always interpreted the stages as this:

Stage 0 = A) either just being released and not in the mainstream eye yet, or B) something that hasn't been released yet but has some hype.

Stage 1 = Obscure, you may find some fanart and you may find one person that may remember it every now and then but it's completely forgotten outside of the handful of fans remaining. Sagwa The Siamese Cat comes to mind.

Stage 2 = Not very well-known to the general public, but does have a dedicated fanbase and some people in the general public remember it - basically a Cult Classic. Treasure Planet comes to mind.

Stage 3 = Fairly well-known overall - not obscure to the general public, but not exceptionally recognizable, though people may know a few things about this work. Fanbase is large, and a hatedom may exist. Fall Out Boy comes to mind (many of their songs are well known, if not massively iconic and beloved by everyone).

Stage 4 = Very well-known - Most people in the general public have at least heard of it and there is a pretty mainstream fanbase, though it isn't a household name that has forever ingrained itself into the public eye. One example that comes to mind is The Fairly Odd Parents.

Stage 5 = Iconic to just about everyone - extremely rare for someone to not know of it's existence or a few things about it. Examples that come to mind are Sesame Street, Spongebob, Pokemon, and Mario.

Stage 6a: Was popular in the past, around Stage 4 or 5, but the popularity waned, either because people forgot about it, as it wasn't as memorable as other Stage 4/5 works, or because it ended production. Stage 6a works still have a dedicated fanbase preventing them from going below Stage 2, and the work may be Stage 3 if particularly well-remembered by a good chunk of people in the general public.

Stage 6b: The fanbase was big in the past, but is small and disorganized today. May have been well-known enough in the past to have been a Stage 4, but it's mostly forgotten by most people in the mainstream and isn't well-known among the general public anymore. Dragon Tales comes to mind, as does Ritchie from Pokémon (though he doesn't count for this trope as he's a character, but he was well-known among the public in the early 2000s).

Stage 6c: It was released in the past and was released to mainstream radio or mainstream networks but is so obscure that there is no fanbase or hatedom at all, and nobody remembers it or knows it exists. May have had a small fanbase at one point but it vanished. Along with the aforementioned Captain Flamingo, another piece of media that comes to mind is the 1996 sitcom Campus Cops, as well as the character of Casey from Pokémon (though she is a character, so she doesn't really count).

Edited by MikeSparks101 on Apr 6th 2023 at 1:32:10 PM

I have never understood why this has examples instead of just being a "defining a meta concept" page. It seems like it's pretty easily tied to fandom drama.

The biggest problem I see on this page is Fan Myopia. When your in a fandom, or in fandom spaces, it's easy to misjudge how mainstream something is. This is really obvious in the Western Animation section, which has a lot of works listed as 5s that really shouldn't be, because while they might have been popular with children at the time, most adults had never heard of them outside of maybe "that show my kid likes", so their actual cultural impact wasn't that high.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 26th 2023 at 1:30:43 PM

I genuinely don't know why this page even has examples. This sounds like something near impossible to accurately judge.

Sounds like we should do a wick check then.

Sandbox.Fandom Life Cycle Wick Check if anyone wants to

What should the wick check look for?

We could just do a general “check usage for patterns” check.

I feel another issue with the page having examples is that, by its very nature, this cycle isn't stagnant. The vast majority of these works would have to be regularly updated for any number of reasons if one could even accurately judge where they currently stand. Feels like more trouble than it's worth.

For what it’s worth, it’s currently listed as a trivia trope, even though it seems somewhat subjective.

That seems odd, it feels so much like a YMMV trope. I don't think the idea is unsalvageable, but a move to YMMV would be a good start.

If a YMMV move is what's wanted, we could check for objective/subjective use as is usually the case in "actually YMMV" wick checks.

I don't think it makes any sense as a YMMV item. "How well-known is a work?" and "how large is a work's fandom?" (not the same question) are objective questions with objective answers. Making it YMMV would just lead to stuff like "well it's really popular with people I know!"

Now do you objectively measure either of those things, though?

It's not necessarily quantifiable in numbers, but it's also not pure personal opinion. more people will be aware of Star Wars than Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, that's a factual claim. If we establish this as a personal opinion, we just encourage more Fan Myopia ("people I know have heard of it").

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 27th 2023 at 10:33:29 AM

I agree it's not totally subjective, but it's certainly unquantifiable. Cutting it - or cutting the examples, anyway; as a page for just talking about the concept it's harmless - seems like a better idea than making it YMMV.

Yeah, it's not really an "opinion" as to whether or not a work is more well-known in the general public than another.

For that reason, I don't really get why the Obscurity Pages were cut. I think they should've stayed.

Arthur is objectively better known to the general public than Sagwa The Chinese Siamese Cat. That's not opinion, it's a fact.

Same with The Lion King being more recognizable to the public at large over, say, Atlantis The Lost Empire.

For Cyberchase and Dragon Tales, they're about equally as well-known to the public and it would probably depend on the person.

Cyberchase is better known to kids today than Dragon Tales because Cyberchase still airs on PBS while Dragon Tales does not.

Dragon Tales seems to be better known to young adults. The #dragontales hashtag has 64 million views on Tik Tok whereas the #cyberchase hashtag only has 21 million views - not even half of Dragon Tales.

To add to this, we also need to remember that "general cultural awareness" and "size of the fandom" are not the same thing, even though the page seems to equate them.

To use an oft-referenced example. If you travel in fandom circles, pretty much everyone has seem or heard about Avatar: The Last Airbender and knows it as large an storied fandom, while it's often joked that Avatar doesn't have nearly as large or active a fandom. But if you talk to people who aren't involved in fandom spaces (the vast majority of people) they are much more like to have seen/heard of the James Cameron movie than the Nickelodeon cartoon.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 28th 2023 at 5:57:03 AM

I think that's where it starts to get difficult. I'm pretty sure most people in the general public, at least have heard of Avatar TLA, though i'd say the amount of people that WATCHED it aren't as many as Avatar the movie.

An archive of some of the obscurity pages exists and most of the examples given are accurate.

For the Western Animation section, i'd say there are quite a few outliers.

Many of Level 2's cartoons are very unwitting. Teen Titans, Gumball, Scooby Doo and Amphibia, among others are very much out of place.

Level 1 - Gumby, Cyberchase and Dragon Tales stick out like a sore thumb.

I love Dragon Tales but it is not recognizable to most people in the general public. Same with Cyberchase and Gumby.

Kind of debating Popeye - he's also rather obscure to most kids these days, and even some adults don't recognize him.

If the page ever gets allowed again, some of the examples should have more context.

Some shows, such as Popeye and Dragon Tales, should probably have a note next to them mentioning that they were a higher level at one point in time - say, maybe Level 0 for Popeye in his heyday.

Edited by MikeSparks101 on Apr 28th 2023 at 6:35:02 AM

I think "most" is a bit of an overestimation. Maybe if we include people who would recognize it as a name they'd heard but not really know much about it. As with most kid's cartoons, for people older than the target demo when it first aired, the most they know is "a show my kid watched". It nowhere close to as recognizable, especially globally, as the Cameron film.

ATLA is listed as a 5 right now, putting on the same level as Star Wars and the MCU, which is a massive overestimate of how cultural pervasive it is. It feels a lot more mainstream if you belong to a specific demographic: 20-something and younger nerds, which happens to be a huge percentage of people editing TV Tropes. But with the general public it's nowhere close to Star Wars level of mainstream.

It's a good example of how fandom people who primarily hang out with other fandom people can underestimate how niche their interests are. Same thing happens with anime fandom. A lot of people don't seem to realize that "mainstream" anime in the States is always a very relative term, because the vast majority of Americans don't watch anime.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 28th 2023 at 10:13:37 AM

Yeah, I meant people who have HEARD of Avatar in some way, not necessarily who watched it.

I think it's the "fandom" bit that gets me. You can absolutely say some works are more popular than others, but fame doesn't necessarily correlate to fandoms, which is what this trope is about. As you said, more people know about ATLA than have watched it / are fans of it, so...

That said, I was mostly asking for the sake of discussion. I don't really have a strong feeling over whether this is subjective or not, but I also don't think we should say it's entirely objective because there are nuances to determining popularity and fandom size.

It's always true that more people have heard about the work than watched it, by definition. I was more saying ATLA hasn't penetrated American pop culture the way something like Star Wars has. There are nuances, but it's still an entirely factual question. Whether we can answer the question is another matter, but if the core issue is "how big is the fandom?", it's not subjective at all.

There's also the issue of what counts as "fandom". I think we'd all agree that just consuming the work isn't enough, not everyone who's seen a Star Wars film is in the Star Wars fandom. But that's were Stage 5 gets weird, because it's supposed to describe works like Star Wars where the fandom "breaks containment" and becomes super mainstream. But how to account for stuff like Cameron Avatar, extremely mainstream pop culture that doesn't have a substantial fandom?

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 28th 2023 at 11:20:17 AM

This whole line of discussion is, again, why I'm really not convinced that having examples for this is doing anything good at all.

Honestly, even if we can actually quantify this reliably, it would take way too much effort to maintain properly. Definition Only sounds like the best option here.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Apr 28th 2023 at 1:40:30 PM

Ditto on all the past few posts hammering home the idea that we should make this trope definition only.