Pulse Wave
Busy procrastinating
Word. Just had to say this.
I, too, can only shake my head at this stupid notion that with the end of a series comes the quick end of the fandom. Whoever says this must be too young to ever have been in a fandom other than for video games.
If the Star Trek fandom had ended with the show, the entire Star Trek franchise would have ended for good in 1967 along with the Trekdom. No more seasons (which were demanded by the fans, twice even), no 1980s films, no TNG and so forth because what for if there are no fans to enjoy all this?
Kim Possible and Futurama would never have been un-cancelled, had their fandoms died along with them.
What if I told you I’m a big fan of an animated show that got its very last episode almost 30 years ago? And that this show still has a fandom even though many fans in North America haven’t even had a chance to see the show for many years?
And if the Bronydom couldn’t survive MLP:FiM itself, it would have ended in spring 2011. EqD, Derpy Hooves News and Ponychan would’ve been dead by June, and there would never have been /mlp/ or a true fan music scene or conventions with 1,000+ congoers. For when season 1 ended, there was no word of another season for months to come. Believe me, there was none, I was already in the fandom back then. Eventually, Hasbro announced a second season, and the fans rejoiced because this came totally unexpected, but until then, the show was over, full stop. The Grand Galloping Gala had been seen as the grand finale for the entire series. Nonetheless, the fandom still grew (!) without new episodes in sight. Go figure.
Want to know why it still grew although the show was over? Because the fans rewatched the one season they had. And because of the fan creativity. We didn’t get new episodes, but we got new fan art and fan fiction everyday. Eventually we even got original, newly composed fan music! Studio B didn’t give us anything new, so we made our own stuff.
The same could be said about after seasons 2 and 3. The first season that was announced during an ongoing season was season 5.
Once again, as already written above: There won’t be any new episodes. But the 221 old episodes won’t go anywhere! We still have them, and you can always rewatch them. There are more ways of watching pone than on wonky livestreams and on YouTube for a couple hours after the premiere. And episodes can be watched more than once, you know. Just sit down, calm down and go through the entire show once more. Or think about which episodes you enjoyed the most and rewatch them. Or rewatch the movie if you like it. Or reread the IDW comics if you like them. And if you find nothing else, go look for fanfics, fan comics, fan animations etc.
And even if G5 comes next year and happens to suck big time — even then we still have [i]FiM[/i], and nobody can take it away from us, and we can still be fans of it. Just like most Trekkers are still big TOS fans (TOS ended 50 years ago and was superseded by new generations about half a dozen times or so over).
Don’t listen to the people that are all like, “Show’s over, finale sucked and killed it for me, fandom’s gonna be gone soon anyway, I’m outta here, I’mma throw myself at the next best hype!” If they can’t be convinced that the fandom will survive, let them go, stay here with the really dedicated fans and enjoy what they create.
I, too, can only shake my head at this stupid notion that with the end of a series comes the quick end of the fandom. Whoever says this must be too young to ever have been in a fandom other than for video games.
If the Star Trek fandom had ended with the show, the entire Star Trek franchise would have ended for good in 1967 along with the Trekdom. No more seasons (which were demanded by the fans, twice even), no 1980s films, no TNG and so forth because what for if there are no fans to enjoy all this?
Kim Possible and Futurama would never have been un-cancelled, had their fandoms died along with them.
What if I told you I’m a big fan of an animated show that got its very last episode almost 30 years ago? And that this show still has a fandom even though many fans in North America haven’t even had a chance to see the show for many years?
And if the Bronydom couldn’t survive MLP:FiM itself, it would have ended in spring 2011. EqD, Derpy Hooves News and Ponychan would’ve been dead by June, and there would never have been /mlp/ or a true fan music scene or conventions with 1,000+ congoers. For when season 1 ended, there was no word of another season for months to come. Believe me, there was none, I was already in the fandom back then. Eventually, Hasbro announced a second season, and the fans rejoiced because this came totally unexpected, but until then, the show was over, full stop. The Grand Galloping Gala had been seen as the grand finale for the entire series. Nonetheless, the fandom still grew (!) without new episodes in sight. Go figure.
Want to know why it still grew although the show was over? Because the fans rewatched the one season they had. And because of the fan creativity. We didn’t get new episodes, but we got new fan art and fan fiction everyday. Eventually we even got original, newly composed fan music! Studio B didn’t give us anything new, so we made our own stuff.
The same could be said about after seasons 2 and 3. The first season that was announced during an ongoing season was season 5.
Once again, as already written above: There won’t be any new episodes. But the 221 old episodes won’t go anywhere! We still have them, and you can always rewatch them. There are more ways of watching pone than on wonky livestreams and on YouTube for a couple hours after the premiere. And episodes can be watched more than once, you know. Just sit down, calm down and go through the entire show once more. Or think about which episodes you enjoyed the most and rewatch them. Or rewatch the movie if you like it. Or reread the IDW comics if you like them. And if you find nothing else, go look for fanfics, fan comics, fan animations etc.
And even if G5 comes next year and happens to suck big time — even then we still have [i]FiM[/i], and nobody can take it away from us, and we can still be fans of it. Just like most Trekkers are still big TOS fans (TOS ended 50 years ago and was superseded by new generations about half a dozen times or so over).
Don’t listen to the people that are all like, “Show’s over, finale sucked and killed it for me, fandom’s gonna be gone soon anyway, I’m outta here, I’mma throw myself at the next best hype!” If they can’t be convinced that the fandom will survive, let them go, stay here with the really dedicated fans and enjoy what they create.