I hate to be the one to tell everyone this, but we are not the arbiters of other people’s art. Trust me, this sucks for me just as much as it sucks for anyone else. If it were up to me, a lot of video game franchises would have stayed the exact same for decades while gravity-feeding me slop from a tube with licensed characters on it. We invest so much of ourselves in a lot of these comics and books and movies and games. Not just financially. Personally. Emotionally. We care about these characters and worlds. I may be a jerk about fan culture, but also I am nothing if not the personification of hypocrisy.
The problem is, the more invested we become, the more we believe we have ownership over it. And - to be sure - the fans are the people who allow artists to make a living off their work and continue doing so. But as fans, some of us tend to think of something likeStar WarsorScott Pilgrimasoursand almost believe those working on it have an illegitimate claim.Wesupported it.Wesaw the movie.Wemade sure allourfriends saw it.Weplayed the games.Weposted about it. We boosted any rumors and news. And so when we got more, it’s natural we felt like whatever happened, it was tailored for exactly whatwewanted.
Oh, and before I continue, I’m not treating capital F ‘Fans’ as a monolithic group. I mean it more as a generic plural term for people who enjoy franchises. A lot of folks are loving the direction of the new Scott Pilgrim - me included. I won’t spoil what happens, but it’s pretty neat and helps give a greater perspective on the world around Scott. Which also means it’s not entirely about that character, which can be annoying if that’s what you were expecting.
But our reasons for loving a series can calcify. I was bothered when they added voice acting toFinal Fantasy 10. Furious. I mean, how dare they! Because I’d spent half of my life investing a big chunk of emotional energy into a series that I desperately did not want to change. I defined what it was to me and therefore I owned it emotionally and therefore the series trying new things was an attack. It was violence! Or, at best, weird - as if they, the developers, got confused about what they were supposed to be doing.
Was I mad thatFinal Fantasy 7went all 3D with polygons? No! Because it happened early enough in my fandom for me to still be ready for new things. It took my ass a long time to realize that I simply enjoyed some things and did not enjoy others and it did not mean the franchise had broken itself on the altar of throwing spaghetti at the wall. Then again, that still happens and maybe bringing upFinal Fantasywasn’t the best idea. But you get what I mean.
We need to be more open to change in games. That doesn’t mean we give companies carte blanche to just throw out anything people liked. But without experimenting within the franchise, we wouldn’t have theLike A DragonRPG system we’ve got now. It sometimes takesNintendoa minute, but it got back to it with recent Zeldas and Marios. Bowser’s Fury is the Minerva’s Den of Mario games. By the way, I thought I was clever on that - and then posted that joke? - nothing. Only you get me. You’re my only friends.
Where was I? Right! Criticizing you. We’re only hurting ourselves when we’re not at least open to change in the things we love. Of course, it’ll be impossible not to get cynical, especially when the word ‘Konami’ comes up like a whisper from the shadows. But we can’t reject new ideas out of hand because we’re not teens or college students anymore and we’re less delighted by new things and more annoyed. Seeing people lose their minds at changes to Scott Pilgrim is annoying because, part of those changes are about growing older. We want things to be the way they were in the bucolic days. Everyone’s favorite Saturday Night Live cast was from when they were 13. But when we lock that in, we’re missing the forest for the trees.
From the fans up to the corporations funding them, we need to give franchises the ability to experiment and change. Canon is made up. Style guides can be changed. It’s okay for a work to criticize fans’ enjoyment of a previous work. Self-reflection isn’t the end of the world. We don’t have to enjoy poorly-made things - nor do we have to enjoy well-made things we don’t like. But if we punish companies for the slightest adjustments or the biggest swings, we’ll only get the same stuff you buy at a Black Friday sale and then never play again.
Now, if you would refrain from reading anything I’ve written aboutSilent Hillthat is the complete antithesis of this column, that would be great.
