Why Creatives Shouldn't Try to Appeal to Toxic Fandom

Hello my friends, and welcome back to my blog.

Today I wanted to talk about several topics that have been on my mind for several months now, but have all kind of come to head and coalesced after an article from Variety last year that seems to have highlighted just how prevalent these issues have become, and how long they have been an issue. 

The article published by Variety in October 2024, titled "Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out for Blood’", and available here, starts by discussing some prominent examples of recent toxicity levelled by fans towards some high profile shows, before exploring several steps that studios are taking in order to prevent these vitriolic pushbacks, with one idea specifically cited being that of special "superfan" focus groups to assess marketing materials for major franchise projects, in addition to standard focus testing groups. 

Now focus group testing is a important part of any film and television project. Discussing story ideas and pitches all the way up to showing early cuts of films in something that is done using focus groups comprised of many examples of a general audience is quite common, and feedback from those groups will be used to develop ideas, approve shows, and even decide if reshoots are needed for films. These focus groups become especially important for anything aiming to appeal to all four quadrants (men/women over/under 25) of a general audience, such as tent-pole blockbusters like Marvel's Avengers films, and in fact it is regularly announced when films like these are undergoing reshoots, and reports of focus group screenings are a common source of leaks for not just the content but also a quality of a film. But I do have to question the logic behind trying to target fandom groups to help decide the development and marketing of franchise films and tv, and especially the justification that doing this will prevent toxic fandom engagement.

What is Toxic Fandom?

A fandom is generally defined as a group of people who share an interest and/or passion, and often feel a sense of camaraderie with each other. Fans usually act together in activities, such as posting in online forums and discussion spaces, attending fan events from watch parties to conventions, or by buying or sometimes even making art or merchandise that represents their interest. Toxic fandom whoever can exist when groups of fans behave in negative ways about their interest. Perhaps they are responsible for bullying other fans over their opinions or likes/dislikes, or writing repeated negative comments about perceived changes or "mistakes" being made to works. Or perhaps their behaviours are worse than that, being threatening, sending racist/mysogynistic/homophobic slurs, or moving onto more dangerous and illegal activity such as sending rape or death threats, doxxing or swatting, or harassing or stalking people in real life. 

Now Variety's own article lists several prominent examples of toxic fandom. It tells of Amandla Stenberg, lead actress from Star Wars: The Acolyte, talking on her Instagram about experiencing "a rampage of... hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language". It mentions the review bombing of House of the Dragon and The Last of Us after episodes featuring queer characters. It mentions the entire wing of YouTube that decrys projects as "woke garbage". The death threats faced by Leslie Jones on the press tour for Ghostbusters. The social media backlash to POC actors in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power or Bridgerton. And there are plenty of further examples. Actors like Moses Ingram, Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp, Kelly Marie Tran, Tony Revolori, Jodie Whitaker, Ncuti Gatwa, and Brie Larson have received vitriolic abuse due to roles in high-profile properties such as Star Wars, Marvel, Star Trek, and Doctor Who. And unfortunately none of this is anything new, it is just something that is becoming far more mainstream. Something that is not necessarily accepted, but definitely being seen more as an unavoidable inevitability of making high-profile geek productions. 

Now I think most people will easily accept that the people behind this toxic online element of fandom culture are a small but very vocal minority. The majority of people who watch something like the new Star Wars show, or the latest Marvel movie, or House of the Dragon or anything else in the "geek" sphere, are casual fans. The general audience. People who watch these things not because they are hugely passionate fans, concerned about the lore and the storyline, but because they enjoyed previous entries, or they thought it looked fun. The ride or die fans are a much smaller group, even with the huge upwards trend of "geek" properties in the mainstream such as sci-fi and fantasy titles, increasing comic book and video game adaptations, and annual conventions, and the proportion of those fans who engage in the toxic excesses, directing venom at the things they claim to be fans of, is smaller still. But because of the modern world, and especially access to the internet, that group is louder than ever.

The internet obviously allows everyone a voice, and allows anyone to express their opinion, whether positive or negative. And anyone is able to find people who shares their opinion, regardless of how toxic their opinion may be. In fact sites like 4chan and its ilk initially began purely for the reason of allowing people to say anything they like, completely free of censorship, while discussing things like anime, gaming and other fandoms. And as more people agree with those opinions, they can get reinforced, and their speakers emboldened, and they move into less fringe online spaces, and while sometimes they may face sanctions on other social media sites such as Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter, they can still build community, helped in part by the algorithms that share this content. Many creators on Tiktok, YouTube and elsewhere have spoken about how some of their best performing content in the algorithm is content that is antagonistic or controversial, such as negative reviews, or covering an aspect of online drama between other creators. Even when people don't share their opinions, they can dislike, or comment, creating further engagement, and feeding the algorithm. As the old adage says, there is no such thing as bad press, and so as a result toxicity is rewarded by the social media systems that us fans all use to engage with our fandoms, making something that we all know is a small minority have a disproportionately loud voice.

The War on "Woke"

So we now know what toxic fandom looks like, and the forms it can take, but a more pertinent question is why these fans decide to act in such toxic ways?

Now not liking a new iteration of something you are a fan of is not necessarily anything new, and in fact goes back to things considered classics now - The Empire Strikes Back had negative reactions, and Star Trek: The Next Generation definitely took a while to warm up hardcore fans. Many new actors taking on the role of Doctor Who took time to win the fans over after their regenerations, and some of them have even only done so now with their audio work with Big Finish, which only the most ardent fans are likely to have heard. 

But toxic fandom goes beyond merely disliking something. In many cases it is active hatred towards an aspect of a piece of work. And the most common cause of such hatred, in the modern day especially, seems to be the idea of "woke".

The idea of something being woke is rooted in identity politics, that is, anything that centres an aspect of a person or group's identity, such as their race, class, sexuality, gender, disability, religion, etc, as part of any form of political movement. Woke as a term originated in Black communities in America as a way of saying that someone was aware of the social injustices and discrimination that can come from being part of a minority group. Now obviously there are many reasons why this may be done, to address social equality for example, or to recognise additional institutionalised prejudices that members of marginalised groups can face, such as barriers to disability, gender or ethnicity in the job market or social security for example. Now this is not to say that identity politics is a perfect solution, and in fact many progressives have argued that identity politics can create more issues by creating division and undermining unitarian goals. However it is much more hated by the right, for a myriad of reasons, some of which, like the disputes from the left, are a sensible highlighting of issues with collecting people under a particular banner simply because of one trait they share, or ignoring other aspects of non-identity based forms of oppression and exploitation, but the most common detractions among many of the more mainstream right wing pundits is that identity politics is not just highlighting issues, but actively pushing for those identities to the detriment of the majority, such as the example of critical race theory teaching that racism is a systemic issue, which is seen by its detractors as accusing all white people of being racist and humbling them to advance POC perspectives instead, or the uses of non-binary pronouns being seen as a attack on binary gender identities, or the current attack on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies in corporate America due to a belief that it discriminates against dominant groups. 

In fandom spaces this kind of discussion is focused on things that are seen as pushing identity politics, or "wokeness", and are heavily pushed back against by a subset of fandom. For example when I listed the actors above who have been attacked for roles in programs and films you may have noticed how many of them were women, or POC, or LGBTQIA+, and it tends to be these actors who face pushback, especially if they take over the role of a character who is a straight white man in the source material, as many of the more toxic elements of fandom see this as the idea of woke politics being "forced" into our fandoms, and the pushback can be seen in many places. 

Many things that can be seen in fandom adaptations can be claimed by toxic fandom to be pushing a woke agenda. A greater representation of minority or queer characters is a big one, with the inclusion of the first explicitly queer characters in the Star Trek franchise in the new series Discovery being accused of pushing an agenda, and unnecessary, and by some seen as being contrary to the vision of creator Gene Roddenberry, which could not be more contrary to the truth. The same kind of pushback was seen at the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the first female iteration of the Doctor in the long-running Doctor Who series, a franchise known for drastically reinventing its protagonist every few years, but for some it seemed that the casting of a woman was a reinvention too far. Other prominent forms of pushback can be seen when a character known by many as a white man is played by a POC in an adaptation, such as ArrowVerse actors Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy Olsen and Kieynan Lonsdale as Wally West/Kid Flash. In many cases this blowback was framed as not being accurate to the source material, with Jimmy Olsen and Wally West being pointed out as redheaded characters who were being "erased" by making them black, however it is telling that this same accusation wasn't made at the casting of brown-haired Colton Haynes as Roy Harper in the same universe. The accusation of a woke agenda can even be thrown at ciswomen who aren't considered traditionally attractive enough, such as Mary Wiseman in Star Trek: Discovery or Emma D'Arcy in House of the Dragon. In fact this kind of toxic pushback can extend to animation as well, and videogames in particular can be a huge source of this vitriol. X-Men 97 announced that Morph would be non-binary, and toxic fans attacked. The Super Mario Bros. Movie trailer had Peach in trousers, and toxic fans attacked. Mortal Kombat toned down the revealing costumes of its female cast, and toxic fans attacked. RPG games like Starfield and Dragon Age: The Veilguard introduced roleplay elements for minority groups such as they/them pronouns, vitiligo, and top surgery scars, and toxic fans lost their minds! And the less said about the reaction that the central character of Abby in The Last of Us 2 and her appearance and actions in the story received the better. 

And of course the most interesting dichotomy of all this is the stance that toxic fandoms like to take that pursuing these woke elements will lead a lack of success on the part of the things doing it. There is a common phrase of "go woke, go broke", and this is used whenever anything perceived by toxic fandom to have woke elements underperforms, especially in the case of videogames. But of course when something proves to be a success these toxic elements then have to argue that this success was because the woke elements were more understated. For example Jason Momoa is a non-white actor, but his casting as Aquaman was not woke, and that is why the first film was so successful. Also Baldur's Gate 3, which did many of the same things that Starfield and Veilguard were criticised for, but obviously wasn't woke as it was incredibly successful. Same for X-Men 97, and so on it goes. Its incredibly inconsistent, and there is a reason for this. 

The Grifter Sphere

Toxic fandom elements are fuelled by a very prominent force that has gained a lot of traction and influence in the last decade and a half, and that is the prominent online Grifter Sphere. 

Essentially as I stated above much of the content that performs best in the social media algorithm is the content that is controversial and antagonistic, and content that enforces toxic elements is especially well rewarded. Film critic and YouTuber Bob Chipman, known as MovieBob, has spoken several times about how his best performing video online was a very negative rant review about the Adam Sandler film Pixels, and that off the back of that video's viral performance he was approached by agents looking to sign him if he continued to produce that exact sort of content. He declined, but the trend of the "angry white male YouTuber" is something that definitely remains. Many YouTubers with large figure subscriber counts such as Nerdrotic, Critical Drinker, HeelvsBabyface, ENDYMIONtv, Sargon of Akkad, Quarter Black Garrett, Chrissie Mayr, Chris Gore and many others either have on their own channels, or as part of Nerdrotic's Friday Night Tights podcast, expressed plenty of opinions that match many people in toxic fandom, and the incredibly talented YouTuber Pillar of Garbage has done a video (one of many on the subject) highlighting the connections between this group and many more established right-wing political influencers including Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and Milo Yiannopoulos, and from there the links continue outwards to many others such as Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson, creating an Alt-Right Geek sphere.

What this creates is an entire economy in online spaces where geek focused "fandom" content reinforces right-wing talking points such as white victimhood, men's rights activism, patriarchy, and even generic sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It means that this toxicity is continually reiterated and reinforced to this subset of the fandom, and constantly bought to bear on every new geek subject, and especially large topics such as upcoming Marvel, Star Wars and video game releases, and usually with several key figures in the firing line to be blamed for anything these people find egregious enough to complain about, and those figures are usually women, minority or queer creators involved in the project who are accused of "pushing an agenda" by these right wing Grifters, such as Brie Larson, Kathleen Kennedy, and Amy Pasqual, as well as all the actors I have previously mentioned. Its all part of a long con to twist cultural perception, legitimise and make mainstream conservative talking points, and most importantly, to make money by exploiting an algorithm that actively rewards controversy.

So when I say that creatives shouldn't try to appeal to toxic fandom, I specifically am referring to the Grifter Sphere that pushes this toxicity that is expressed by the fandom, who have made influencing these creatives to avoid any sort of progressive theming one of their key goals. These people would like nothing more than content that reinforces their worldview, and obviously I think that that would be to the complete detriment of everything that makes these franchises great. The media in franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Doctor Who, and so many others that I have spoken about either here or elsewhere, I firmly believe, is progressive by design, meant to challenge the status quo and argue for what is right and just. 

However I want to move on from the Grifters, and the toxic fandom aspects, and look more broadly at what I think the role of a creative should be in creating this properties.

The Role of the Creative

"It's not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of the artist to give the audience what they need."

That is a quote by Alan Moore, the legendary comic writer behind Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, V For Vendetta, Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man Of Tomorrow?, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, and many other works across his storied career.  He is a man who has built his career of telling unusual and groundbreaking stories, many of which iterate on popular and beloved characters. And the view he has here has been shared by many others in creative positions, with a similar quote of "Never give the audience what they think they want. Give them what they really need," being attributed to many over the years including Marvel creators and editors Stan Lee and Joe Quesada, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine showrunner Ira Steven Behr. 

Now in many ways listening to fans can be a good thing. The most recent and high-profile example of this was the redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog for the first film after the negative reaction to the film's first trailer. The film was delayed so that the character could be redesigned to more closely match his video game counterpart, and this undoubtedly led to the film being far better received than it would with the original design, which has now led to two sequel films, a spin-off streaming series, and another film in development. There was also the fan requests for the release of the Zack Snyder Cut of Justice League, which was received very well when it released on HBO Max, with many fans raising significant amounts for charity in the name of that movement, however that group also had many toxic elements present as well. And there are probably multiple examples across comics, novels, video games and TV where fan reactions to characters and plot elements have led to an elevation and focus on those elements, and there are definitely many characters and concepts in long-running TV shows especially that have taken more of a focus due to audience reaction, such as characters introduced as part of a storyline and expected to die at the end of it being saved, or recurring characters joining the main cast members.

There are also times where it is important to ignore fan reaction, and let things find the audience for them.  A good recent example is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Even beyond the toxic responses that were received, the first season was not well received by audiences, and this led Amazon to do research as to why. As a result the second season released last year was much better received, and had also shaken off the toxic elements who no longer bothered with it. In contrast the recent Star Wars series The Acolyte had its second season cancelled, in large part to the negative fan receptions, despite it apparently being a very well performing series for Disney+, being apparently the second most watched series on the service in 2024, behind only Percy Jackson and the Olympians, perhaps in another more positive example of there being no such thing as bad press, as the online controversy probably caused more people to watch the series. 

Star Wars also has two other prominent examples of both listening to the fans, and also giving the fans something unexpected that they needed. Firstly after the very mixed, and incredibly toxic reception to Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi, especially in contrast to the huge success of the previous film The Force Awakens, the final film in the planned trilogy was excessively retooled by Disney and Lucasfilm. Colin Trevorrow was removed as director, and his script replaced, with The Force Awakens' director JJ Abrams being hired to write and direct the final instalment. The reaction to the finally released film, The Rise of Skywalker, was perhaps as mixed among audiences as that of The Last Jedi, however nowhere near as toxic, as many elements of that film were either changed completely or outright ignored, making the film feel like an attempted apology to the fans that didn't like the previous film. However they also surprised many fans with the release of the streaming series Andor. Focusing on the Rogue One character of Cassian Andor, the show was a prequel of 12 episodes set 5 years before the characters death in the film, and told the story of him joining with the Rebellion against the Empire, and the battle against the fascism they are enforcing upon the galaxy. The series was a smash hit among both critics and fans, with many fans really enjoying the tone and style, and the second season is due this year. It serves as a perfect example of the quote, as Andor is something that fans didn't know they wanted, but definitely needed, especially in the modern day that is seeing a rise of fascist ideology a cross the Western World. 

I'm reminded of the Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie episode of The Simpsons, where in their effort to revitalise the show Itchy & Scratchy they conduct focus testing using the children of Springfield, only to receive a mixed group of answers, suggesting that the audience truly doesn't know what it really wants until they have it, where they will either enjoy it, or reject it, as they do with Poochie in the episode.

Now of course there are thing besides the audience that can restrict the creative to an enormous degree, especially in films and TV, where producers and executives can meddle to an insane degree. In fact the Poochie episode of The Simpsons also demonstrates this, as the studio executives are involved at many stages during the creation of the new character. There are many examples of films being hugely altered away from directors and writers, sometimes even to the point that the final product is drastically changed, with David Ayer's Suicide Squad being a prominent example from the past decade, where Warner Brothers executives gave the film to the company that edited the well received trailer to recut the film, and other creatives, such as Josh Trank on Fant4stic, Joel Schumacher on Batman and Robin, or David Fincher on Alien3, have spoken about having their films edited and drastically changed from their original vision after photography was finished. Now while the examples I've used are ones that drastically hurt the final product this isn't always the case, and in many instances notes from studio executives can be used to drastically improve the finished product, and in fact it is so common that studio executives are involved in film production, influencing every stage of the production, that is more often we hear about when notes are rejected or that studio interference negatively impacts a film than when we do otherwise. Marvel Studios for example is heavily involved in both pre- and post-production of its films, and for the most part this is either not noticed or lauded by the audience. However when creatives are hampered by the executives, it becomes noticeable even without explicit confirmation, such as the recent film Madame Web. 

So obviously I believe that creatives should be allowed to tell their stories, and that those stories should be judged by the audience on their own merits. In an ideal world I think this would be done without overt interference by executives, as in many of the most notable cases I believe that such executive interference does nothing but dilute at best and mangle at worst the creator's original intent. It is for this reason that I am so in favour of the release of director's cuts of films, and seeing deleted scenes, abandoned concepts and rejected scripts, and learning so much about the production of things I love, as I think there can be many good reasons why ideas are changed, and other contributions can come from actors and others involved in the process that can help improve the final product, but the creatives should be guiding the story, and telling the story they want to tell.

Bearing that in mind then, we land on an important question, especially when concerning fandoms - should Creators be fans of the franchises they create for?

Fans as Creators

So naturally after everything I have said so far you might perhaps think that I am of the opinion that it makes the most sense for creators in a franchise to be a fan of that franchise right? Well the thing is, fans as creators can pose their own issues. To go back to that Alan Moore quote, fans as creators can focus perhaps too much on giving the audience what they want, rather than what they need, and that could become a hindrance to the work, bogging it down with fanservice.

A good example of fans and non-fans as creators and the various impacts that can have can be found with the Star Trek franchise. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was overseen directly by Gene Roddenberry, and it was not well received by fans, audiences or critics, with Roddenberry's tight grip of the project being directly blamed by the studio for the failure. As a result when the sequel was greenlit Roddenberry was sidelined to an advisory role, and the project handed to writer/producer Harve Bennett and writer/director Nicholas Meyer, with Meyer especially having no prior experience with Star Trek. The film they made, created by Bennett as a sequel to the episode "Space Seed", was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and is generally credited with reviving the franchise. The two of them returned and collaborated again on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which went on to become one of the most popular films with general audiences, and becoming very financially successful, and even leading to the studio greenlighting the new show The Next Generation. However in the 2000s the poorly received, and for a while the last, Star Trek film, Nemesis, was directed by Scott Baird, hired deliberately as a non-fan to inject some fresh energy into the franchise after the poor performance of the previous film. Instead what resulted was a film that failed to find any audience, underperforming its predecessor, and became one of the final nails in the coffin the franchise found itself in for some time. At least that was until 2009, and the release of the simply titled Star Trek, a collaborative effort by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Bryan Burk and JJ Abrams. Orci and Lindelof considered themselves Trekkies, Kurtzman was a casual fan, Burk was a non-fan, and Abrams was much more of a Star Wars fan, aware of Star Trek but not really even enough to be a casual fan. What resulted was an incredibly popular and very successful film that served as a reboot to the franchise, led to two sequels, and eventually saw Kurtzman hired as a producer overseeing the current crop of Star Trek projects at Paramount, including Discovery, Picard and Strange New Worlds. Now there has been some criticism from fans and reviewers of the new shows that they maybe rely a bit too much on nostalgia and fanservice, a criticism I tend to agree with for the most part, but the success the franchise is currently seeing is pretty unparalleled, and the mix of fans and non-fans in the creative teams is a large reason why that might be the case. 

There are other examples of non-fans creating works though with mixed results, but all with their own fans, including the examples I have spoken about previously in this blog, such as Star Wars. Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves was a brilliant film that I have spoken about before in a podcast episode, but the filmmakers were not fans of the classic tabletop RPG, and instead they simply used the universe as a backdrop to tell the story that they wanted to tell, which feels very apt considering the source material. Zack Snyder was famously not much of a fan of the DC superheroes when he began his work on Man of Steel, and across the two subsequent films he worked on for better or ill he crafted a very unique and singular vision of those iconic characters, which may not have resonated strongly with the general audience, but definitely had its fans. Ira Steven Behr spoke on the Deep Space Nine retrospective documentary What We Left Behind about how he felt that his show had to fight to earn the respect of Trekkies, and in many ways probably upset many, but that it has paid off in the show being very well regarded by fans decades later. Marvel editor Joe Quesada, never a fan of the idea of Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane, and a fan of the younger Spider-Man who felt that the marriage aged the character, created the infamous story "One More Day", which removed the marriage in a literal deal with the devil. This story was unpopular with fans, but has led to many subsequent stories that have been very beloved and possibly could not have existed had the marriage remained, such as the Superior Spider-Man run. And most people in supervisory roles on Star Wars properties are fans of the franchise, such as Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, Rian Johnson, JJ Abrams et al, and yet the projects in that series have been variously received by the fans.

As I said before I believe that creators should be allowed to tell the stories that they want to tell, and that it probably doesn't matter if that creator is a fan. Non-fans can make great work in a franchise just as much as fans can make a bad work, and vice versa. And regardless of anyone's thoughts about the work the people involved, whether actors, directors, writers, producers, artists or anything else, do not deserve any toxicity directed at them personally by anyone who didn't enjoy their work. It is one thing to say that the latest entry of your favourite franchise is something you didn't enjoy, or that the writer/director was totally wrong in their choices, or that the actor did a poor job portraying the character as you know them. However it is quite another thing to personally attack the people involved, or to hurl abuse at them. 

And you would really think that statements like that wouldn't need to be said, but when I see the toxicity that is present in areas of fandom spaces, directed at the people involved in a piece of work that supposed fans just didn't like, the existence of the new show being decried as "destroying their childhood", "ruined the franchise" or any other ridiculous hyperbole, I feel nothing but shame that I share these areas with people like that. 

In Conclusion

So to go back to the starting point for all of this, I think I have made abundantly clear that I think toxic fandom is very much a minority, albeit a disproportionately loud one, and one influenced by an Alt-Right Grifter culture, and that the risks of creatives listening to their advice and guidance would do nothing but lead to weak and disappointing products that do not serve the general audience of fans for that work. 

To go back to the quote above, "It is the job of the artist to give the audience what they need". 

Fans need works that challenge them. That toy with their expectations and beliefs of what something can be, especially in the cases of long-running franchises, and more importantly that leave an impact beyond the first experience. The film, game, novel or comic that you are enjoying as part of the latest entry in your beloved fandom - you know that it has left a mark when you sit and think about it after that first time, whether for good or for ill. In fact in some ways you could argue that by that metric the things that toxic fans are getting that are causing the vitriol are exactly what they need, as the fact that they can't stop thinking about what has irritated them so much shows it has had a lasting impact, not that they would ever admit this. 

So yes I do believe that any attempt to appeal to toxic fandom, in any way, is the wrong choice for the creators of the works these fandoms follow to make. I do not believe that toxic fans would ever be satiated if even minor appeals were made, and that they would exert greater and greater influence and control were they given a single appeasement. I believe that it is much better to ignore them, to not amplify their voices, and to prosecute them when they become abusive. I do not endorse toxic fandom in any of its actions, and think that anyone who harms anyone else, or even threatens harm as that in itself is harmful mentally, deserves punishment.

Unfortunately toxic fandom is something we must continue to endure, and I understand creatives wanting to minimise the backlash they will face, especially in the modern age where some backlash can be not just immediate but grotesque in its severity at times, and I agree that some steps should be taken to keep creators safe from harm, but never to the detriment of the story being told.

That's all for this blog. Obviously this covered some heavy and potentially triggering topics so I hope everyone out there stays safe, looks after themselves, and reaches out for help should they need it. I will invariably be back with another blog at some point soon, and you can find my podcast links in my Linktree to follow me there for more geek content. 

Until next time.

Garhdo