I saw this type of talk in the fandom rivalries thread and wanted to say some stuff but I didn't want to take that thread off topic since it wasn't specifically pertaining to fandom RIVALRIES.

As I'm sure I already mentioned in the Rivalries section, The Sailor Moon fandom lends itself to this by being the fandom of the most famous and popular magical girl show. As a result you get a lot of people of an elitist mentality who deride other magical girl shows as a ripoff of it.

Though it has chilled considerably in recent years, the Madoka Magica fandom was the nastiest I had even seen back in the day when it first came out. It was such a wildly popular hit that you could not even suggest that the show wasn't 100% original (specifically that a lot of it was done by other magical girl shows like Sailor Moon), or people would send you death threats.

I remember making the mistake of listing the show as dropped back when episode 7 came out, and wow did people freak out. "HOW COULD YOU DROP IT?? IT'S SO AMAZING!!" The amount of times I've seen people say "I'm forcing my friends to watch it because IT'S SO GOOD!" is kind of disgusting. As I mentioned in the rivalries thread, the worst are mostly people who like Madoka but not traditional magical girl shows, or haven't seen them. The claim the show to be so superior over "Mindless sunshine and rainbows" that they think everything else is.

Lately the worst of the Madoka fandom seems to be centered around one thing, Homura and whether or not she did anything wrong in Rebellion Story. There's so much arguing about that even now because no one can come to an agreement on what the heck happened at the end of the movie. Some people will go so far as to label all four of the other mains as being awful mean bullies to Homura and completely ignore the awful things she's done to make her seem like a perfectly sympathetic character.

I think the worst fandom of a definite magical girl show right now though is the Precure fandom, mostly centered around tumblr. http://precurefandomhypocrites.tumblr.com/   This tumblr right here pretty much exposes the nastiest of the Precure fandom.

While not technically a magical girl show, I feel that Steven Universe deserves a mention. It's really sad that I can name four people (two on this site I believe) who don't want to watch it specifically because of how bad the fandom is.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that the show is something of a darling among social justice communities due to doing a lot of things that please them, like having a diverse cast of ethnicity and body types. The word "Representation" comes up a lot, and when you have a bunch of people latching onto a show because of that, they'll defend if viciously. 

Draw or Cosplay as Rose Quartz when you're anything but chubby? Prepare for flames and death threats.
Cosplay as Garnet but you're not black? NO!
Don't like Ruby and Sapphire as characters? You must be so homophobic because queer representation is all those characters are and you're trying to erase it!

A lot of the other magical girl fandoms are guilty of this, like the adult female fans who get so angry when adult male fans watch a show for Japanese kindergartners, acting as if them liking it is somehow gonna take away their positive representation. The SU fandom takes the cake by virtue of having so many things.

The gems themselves were stated by the creators to not have genders per say, but they look female and refer to each other as such. This has caused quite a clash between different sides of the fandom, and if you refer to the gems as genderless or female, you're bound to get yelled at by someone for erasing someone's representation.

It's sad how adults can completely take over a show made for kids and make it about them.

sometimes i wish that growing up would make people less crazy.
I was threatened once this year over Sailor Moon Crystal
 and a few years back, I was threatened and insulted over the course of a few months due to a crossover. what the crossover was, i am not sure. I understand that people can hate it but they don't.. they shouldn't threaten other people.
---
 speaking of the gems, people say that if you say they have no race, they will insist that garnet is black, pearl is white and so on...
 ---
 As for me... I am exasperated with it all.

sailorpandabear wrote:

---
 speaking of the gems, people say that if you say they have no race, they will insist that garnet is black, pearl is white and so on...
 ---
 As for me... I am exasperated with it all.

The phrase "Coded" is often used in this type of thing.

Garnet is the easiest to see why they'd say this, since she has as black voice actress and an afro.

And Ugh. Don't even get me started on how the fandom responds to ANYTHING from Sailor Moon Crystal. Giving someone a two hour lecture about what the animation industry is like doesn't make the low budget action and constant animation errors any less painful.

It's like when the Madoka Magica fandom responds to ANY criticism or subjective dislike of the show by telling you that "You missed the point" or "Didn't watch the same show". I see those phrases so often it makes me sick. 

Take the character designs for example. If you don't like them, you apparently don't "get" the fact that the creators purposely used a very gooey, moe looking art style to create a dissonance with the dark setting. Any idiot can get that from day 1, but apparently knowing this means you CANNOT find it unappealing.

"You missed the point! It's not supposed to be like other magical girl show!" Is cried if you disliked the show because of how dark and miserable it is. "It's a tragedy!" is another common one. Like... good lord, so what if someone doesn't like the show, or find it appealing to their tastes. No one saying it's a bad show because of these things.

"If you don't like it, you shouldn't have watched it!" But how can you know what you're getting into if the show goes to great lengths to mislead viewers? 

"Do some research before you watch it!" First of all, spoilers, second of all, it's not that easy. Wikipedia had the show listed as simply a magical girl show before it aired, and Yuuki Yuuna was the same way. No one knew it was gonna have a dark twist when it was airing.

The whole deal with Madoka spending most of the show crying is especially hilarious because the people who defend her actions are always the ones who finished the show or knew what was going to happen. The ones who are watching the show blindly will always be like "When is she gonna DO SOMETHING?"

Don't like how the characters behave? You missed the point. Now listen to me lecture you for two hours about the character's tragic backstory that you already know. Because that totally changes the fact that Kyouko and Homura both tried to kill Sayaka, or how coldly Homura reacts to Madoka crying over Sayaka's body. It's not a messed up thing if the character has enough pity points! Totally likable characters!

Well, sigh. all I can do is hope for fandoms to improve.

*raises hand* I'm one of those people who don't like Steven Universe because of the fandom. I was once on Tumblr, and I saw someone send an ask to a SU confession blog basically saying they were scared to admit to being a Peridot fan because Peridot is short, and they are not short... They were scared that people would tell them that they can't be a fan of Peridot for that reason. Thankfully, the confession blog responded reassuring them that it's okay to be her fan, but the fact that that was actually a thought that went through someone's head speaks volumes about the Steven Universe fandom.

And yeah, the Madoka Magica fandom is awful, but I admit, I've seen a lot of bad stuff from the hatedom too. PMMM has largely fallen out of favor since Rebellion Story came out, and people who do like the series get a lot of crap. That series is just a very touchy subject altogether, I think.

Anyway... I would say that one of the worst magical girl fandoms is Sailor Moon. Honestly, it was always bad. I joined it back in 2008, and back then, the fandom consisted largely of creepy perverts. I was only 13, so it was a very uncomfortable environment for me. Nowadays, the fandom has lots of social justice warriors in it, and they have their own problems...

And of course, there was just the general wars in the Sailor Moon fandom that will never change... The wars between the different iterations, which have only gotten worse since Crystal has been thrown into the mix. The shipping wars. The dub vs sub war, and nowadays, the war over which translations are the highest quality. The war against other magical girl series, particularly Tokyo Mew Mew and Wedding Peach. Ughhhhhhh why is the Sailor Moon fandom so terrible....

Honestly, I've only been really exposed to the Sailor Moonfandon on websites and the Galaxy Cauldron, and lemme tell you that GC probably has the best of the Sailor Moon community on it. Like seriously, they do a really good job of keeping things drama free, and I've never seen any serious fights about ships or dub versus sub or anything. 
But the the things that are being said here can be said about basically any fandom. The ONLY fandom I have ever encountered that is calm and doesn't have shipping wars (as far as I've seen, I'm not on Tumblr) is the Welcome to Night Vale fandom. Sadly,they're the exception to the rule. I'm just kinda worried that one day I'll tell someone I don't ship Cecilos and get called homophobic or something. But I'm going off topic...

And trust me, before Sailor Moon crystal, In the  sailor moon  fandom, there were threats given to me a decade ago...
---
 Some people are too ridiculous.

??What's this?? I never saw a "bad" Maho shoujo fandom.

Na11 wrote:

??What's this?? I never saw a "bad" Maho shoujo fandom.

I felt the same way too, until I joined tumblr a few years back. I learned that even the Precure fandom had its ugly side. I was really surprised. I never expected such a sweet show for grade school girls to have such a whiny, entitled adult fanbase who will put you on a circle-jerk blacklist if you so much as ship a character or dislike a particular season.

The Sailor Moon fandom is also infamous for being really obnoxious and elitist, treating every other show like it's a ripoff of Sailor Moon. Crystal only made things worse as it divided the fandom into "Crystal is awful, now here's 5000 reasons why!" and "How dare you hate Crystal!!"

The keyword there being Tumblr. I've been on Tumblr for four years now, and let me tell you: Every single fandom I have seen on there is toxic and awful. Animal Crossing, doll collecting, Japanese fashion… Just about every fandom I've ever seen on there has been completely awful.

That's why I love it here so much! This may be a small forum, but it's so peaceful!

Animal Crossing? Doll collecting!?

How can you be toxic in those things...?

Ohohoho! I'll tell you how!

With Animal Crossing, it's all a big popularity contest, as to who has the most beautiful town. There are, of course, sane people who remind you that you can play however you want, but you will get next to no attention on Tumblr unless your town is absolutely perfect. You have to have the nicest town layout, best villagers... Everything in your town has to be in the right place, and the theme should be coordinated right down to the color of the flowers. There is so much pressure put onto you about making pretty aesthetic screenshots of your game that, for a while, I really lost interest because the fandom is so crazy. Plus, now that town hacking is a thing, there's a huge war between people who hack and people who don't, and which is better. (Pro-hacking is the more popular side — it's considered really beautiful to put plants in the river for some strange reason.)

As for dolls... It's mainly Asian ball-jointed dolls that have the craziest community. BJDs are incredibly expensive luxury items, with some of the most expensive ones being $1000 or more. Naturally, with a hobby that's so expensive, you're going to get a lot of rich elitists. Which brands are best... The war between people who think only expensive Korean and Japanese dolls are best, and those who think cheaper Chinese dolls are good too, and the people who like both... And then, there are recasts — bootleg dolls — and the arguments of whether or not it's ethical to buy a knockoff. And that's not even getting into the popularity contest of whose dolls are prettiest, whose dolls are ugly... Name calling on confession blogs, etc.

Honestly, Tumblr is just a breeding ground for the craziest, nastiest people. Which is funny for s community that prides itself on being so "accepting".

Dear god. O.o


I guess people would mock my town for my over grown flower fields. As for the dolls sheesh and I thought beanie babies collecting was rough. XD

i am on tumblr... and i hope that i am not crazy and nasty to any of you.

Oh don't worry!! You're not. I'm on Tumblr too, and I'm pretty sure I'm not like that!! Honestly, when you talk to people on Tumblr... For the most part, they're pretty nice. Both of those fandoms I mentioned have something in common: they have anonymous confession blogs. I think the anonymous ask function is where a lot of the bad stuff from Tumblr comes from, because as we all know, being anonymous makes some people feel like they're entitled to be mean. It's quite sad, really.