Every so often I’ll try to peek into fandoms for other video games/shows/movies and see if they’re worth joining and….ugh.
I’m not gonna lie. It just makes me feel so lucky to be apart of the Soulsborne fandom in general. I have been here for years now and I have never felt the stress or strain of classic fandom toxicity the way I do when I spend only a day or two trying to rummage through other fandoms. Negative fan behavior and strife has literally kept me out of so many other online communities. I rarely feel secure anywhere else.
But Soulsborne? Sure, we have the stuck-up git gud crowd that doesn’t understand what git gud really means, we have bitter casuals that spam the most overpowered weapons until those weapons get nerfed and then they start screaming, we have some occasional lore disagreements that usually involve something to do with old men and their dolls, we sometimes have sibling-style fights over the second Dark Souls game that lead to some pretty intense verbal exchanges, though the second a FromSoftware hater gets involved, everyone teams up and roasts them for daring to diss any Dark Souls game because how dare you.
But that’s about it. Ship wars are almost nonexistent/extremely tamed, there aren’t fandom morality teams, there aren’t flocks of raging teens attacking voice actors or writers, there aren’t internet-viral horror stories about the utter madness of gatekeeping revolutions or bullying campaigns, etc..
It’s just chill and full of good memes and people that would be considered clinically insane if they ever casually said the things they say when discussing lore intricacies. No girl, you can’t explain to your neighbor why you believe that consuming three umbilical cords, killing the moon, and ascending to squidhood is the best possible option to choose when trapped in a world enslaved to The Cycle, but you absolutely can say that here! Let’s talk about it!!
Hell, we even have dozens of stories and anecdotes about how Dark Souls helped people through depression and anxiety. I mean, Solaire exists. Japanese artists draw some of the cutest chibi art of him and other wholesome characters as though we were in a fandom for kids. Or rather, how kid fandoms were meant to be. Ha.
Oh and, speaking of artists? The content creators in this fandom? You guys are literally some of the most talented people I’ve ever seen. The streamers, the artists, the writers, the lore freaks, the data-miners, the musicians, the comedy crowd, the illustrators, the comic/zine creators, the meme lords? This community thrives on these people. We are drowning in content every day thanks to them!
I just love it here. It’s like my Firelink Shrine. A safe little haven full of weird people that are actually my friends. I’ve gotten through some of the heaviest points in my life thus far with undeniable encouragement from these damn games and the community built around them. This is what fandoms were meant to be, my friends.
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
areudirty
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
