What you need to know about your fandom
I don’t have a fandom like J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien (maybe I don’t have enough initials in my pen name). In fact, I don’t really have a fandom at all. However, I am certainly a fan of certain franchises. Sometimes I find myself cringing when these franchises are either rebooted or remade. Sure, there is always some hope that the new material can successfully capture the elements that made the original the hit that it was. However, this is rarely the case.
Before we give our fans what they want, we need to understand what it is.
For example’s sake, let’s look at two famous sci-fi franchises that have some very die-hard followers: Star Wars and Star Trek. Everyone agrees that these two franchises are similar in that they are both in the science fiction genre, but that’s essentially where the similarities end. In fact, these fandoms are almost so vehemently adamant on the superiority of their source material that you...