“What Would You Like if it Weren’t for the Fans?”

By Isaac Reynoso

There are many diverse forms of entertainment and they all have their own interesting and sometimes odd fanbases. 

Fans can heavily enhance the experience and enjoyment of things that you like. Imagine you discover some movie or artist that you now love and then you discover other people who like that same thing too.

It can be fun to talk to someone about something that you both enjoy, but sometimes it doesn’t go exactly as planned. Sometimes you can be surprised by how odd, intense, or even toxic that these fans can be. 

The “toxic” fans can go too far at times and ruin the experience for others. The question of “What would you like if it weren’t for the fans?” is a question that many people may subconsciously think about but not usually think of on an everyday basis. Today, the question is being brought into the spotlight.

Jalen Bullock ‘23 gives a prime example of a fanbase that he sees as “toxic.” Bullock says, “I do like the anime ‘My Hero Academia’ but the fandom is pretty… interesting.” 

Bullock enjoys the show “My Hero Academia” but the fans kind of weird him out, despite this he, continues to be a fan, although he does not go around openly talking about it or describing himself as a fan. 

He goes on to explain that a thing that toxic fans do at times is send threats to the creator of whatever it is they love so much. He says, “ They send death threats to the creator of the anime. A big thing in the anime community is ‘shipping characters’ and that’s a thing that a lot of people do but the ‘My Hero’ fandom takes it to the next level and they almost try to make it ‘canon’ even though there is no proof of that.”

Shipping characters is a thing that some fans of different forms of media take part in. It is a process where they think of what a relationship between two characters from a book, movie, TV show, etc. would be like and create scenarios for that relationship. On the surface level, it can be good fun but, like anything, some people take it too far. 

Just like Bullock explains, some fans get angry when they don’t get what they want or their idea of a good ship is not canon (canon meaning true to the actual story instead of being something created by the fans)

Some people go too far and send threats to people over it which can ruin the whole community at times and give everyone associated with it a bad rep. Bullock does mention that there are good fans as well, saying, “There are of course ‘normal’ fans in the community.” He ends on a lighter note, saying, “But it is a very good anime and I do enjoy watching it.”

Jonathan Woodbury, biology and AP biology teacher at Redwood high school, brought his own unique answer to the question. He says, “A little known fact about Mr. Woodbury here, being a teacher was actually my plan B, and my plan A was being a dentist.”

Woodbury says that he wanted to be a dentist in high school and went to college and took biological science classes as well as medical science classes, “I took calculus for biology and medicine, I took organic chemistry for biology and the pre-med equivalent of chemistry, which is a harder organic chemistry I suppose.” 

Woodbury even had an internship at a periodontist office, which is a type of dentist that works on patients’ gums. He says, “I always had a really good time observing those dentists.” Despite enjoying dentistry, he dislikes the “fans” of dentistry if you can call them that.

Woodbury says, “The whole ‘fandom’ of dentistry, I suppose, of those pre-med students who wanted to get into a medical program or dental students who wanted to get into a dental school, those people kind of drove me nuts.” 

He goes on to explain why he disliked them and thought they were so crazy, he says, “I understand that this is super duper important but they really cared about their grades way too much than I cared about my grades. I was just one of those people that was like ‘I want to do my best and I want to push myself and whatever grade I got I was happy with.” 

It wasn’t just the community that made Woodbury switch career paths and end up becoming a teacher but it did play a big part in the switch. Woodbury finishes by saying, “It was a different vibe from what I was wanting and looking for and teachers are cool… I know a lot of good ones so I like that vibe better.”  

Tags: fan base, fan club, fan culture, fan favorites, isaac reynoso, Redwood, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, rhs