Friendly Fandoms

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The opposite of Fandom Rivalry. Two (or more) fandoms have a lot of overlap because of shared talent (sometimes the result of a Production Posse), because of similar subject matter, or for no real reason at all — they just like each other! Often people get into one fandom and are encouraged by this relationship to get into the other.

Examples of Friendly Fandoms include:

Inter-Media/General

Anime and Manga

  • Basically any series by CLAMP has a significant fan overlap with any other series done by the same group. The fact that CLAMP wrote a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, that included characters from almost every series they've ever done essentially created a pan-series fandom.
  • The Humongous Mecha genre of anime has a very, very tightly intertwined fandom, so fans of one mecha show are incredibly likely to be fans of many other mecha shows as well. Mecha as a genre has one of the longest active Western fandoms, which started to form all the way back in The Eighties thanks to imported dubs of shows such as Macross and Go Lion. Most of the mecha fandom at the time was comprised of sci-fi fans who have traditionally been a fandom centered on the genre as well, rather than the individual work, and this structure persists even to this very day, long after the fandoms for other genres of anime divided along series lines due to the constant infighting. This is all helped by the fact mecha has probably the biggest Massive Multiplayer Crossover on the market, Super Robot Taisen, which serves as a very good entry point for the genre and showcases the various stories, styles and approaches the genre has to offer while merging plots from multiple series into a cohesive, all-encompassing whole.
    • The mecha fandom as a collective whole is on very good terms with the Ecchi and Magical Girl fandoms. They managed to bond with the former thanks to a lot of shows featuring prominent ecchi fanservice (starting all the way back in 1972 with Mazinger Z, which had Sayaka in many highly provocative situations), while with the latter it was over the four "honorary mecha" magical girl shows that featured mechanical elements prominently (Cutey Honey, My-HiME, Lyrical Nanoha and Symphogear). Thanks to all four also featuring large amounts of Les Yay moments, they also provide a connection to the Yuri fandom. The latter, however, is also a case of Fandom Rivalry: mecha fans are very much not fans of lesbian shipping of straight characters and instead prefer their lesbians to be out-and-out canon.

Literature

  • Terry Pratchett fans and Neil Gaiman fans, because of their collaboration on Good Omens.
    • And Douglas Adams fans overlap with both!
    • And Douglas Adams fans lap over with Doctor Who fans, since Adams was a writer and producer for the show, and one of his books, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, was basically a rewrite of a long-unused DW script. Then Neil Gaiman wrote a Doctor Who episode, showing his love for the series, cementing these relationships.
    • Back in perhaps 2005 or 6, there was a major crash on a William Gibson message board, so the members of that board were essentially invited to hang out on the official Gaiman forum until the site issues were resolved. They did, and the two fandoms got along so well that some members wound up participating on both boards for years.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, due to both being fantasy written by authors who were close personal friends and both had an intensely Christian worldview (which influenced their works to varying degrees).
  • Back when both series were originally coming out, the Sweep and Circle of Three fandoms fed into each other, since they were both YA series about teenage witches coming out around the same time. There were many GeoCities sites dedicated to both.

Live-Action TV

  • Jeeves and Wooster and A Bit of Fry and Laurie, due to the shared double act of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
  • Joss Whedon's shows sometimes seem like they just have one big fandom.
  • J.J. Abrams' shows have this, too.
  • Veronica Mars fans overlaps with Joss Whedon fans as well, likely because Joss himself was a fan of Veronica Mars (even making a cameo once) and because it features a snarky petite blonde title character who's a strong woman.
  • Tin Man and Alice - mostly because of their similar production staff and tone.
  • Old-school Doctor Who and Blake's 7 were made by the same people and shared several actors and sets and locations, so B7 pretty much became the original adult sister show to Doctor Who. Most B7 fans are also avid Doctor Who fans.
  • Sherlock and Doctor Who have a bit of overlap and crossovering going on (Sherlock overlapping more with Doctor Who than the other way round, due to a smaller fanbase) thanks to The Grand Moff being executive producer at both.
  • Ever since Neil Gaiman wrote the very popular Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Wife" for series 6, one which confirmed old fan theories, and contained a general display of awesome- the two fandoms have definitely gained a friendship.
  • Let's just say the running gag Inspector Spacetime was very well received by both Community fans and Doctor Who fans.
  • Smallville and Supernatural fandoms have a very, very large amount of overlap, to the point where it could quite reasonably argued that they share almost the same core base of fans. The fact that during the second half of the 2000s they almost always aired one after the other on the same network certainly helped this.....as did the fact that they were the two powerhouse Sci-Fi series that were basically keeping the ungrateful CW Network afloat. The then-current network president's perceived treatment of the two shows as Network Red Headed Stepchildren (in favor of promoting shows like Gossip Girl or the 90210 remake as being the network's flagship programs) led to further unity between the two fandoms, which rightly or wrongly perceived themselves as being united against a common foe (namely, the perceived indifference on the part of the execs).
    • The massive prevalence of fanfic crossovers between the two shows is also a testament to the unity between the Smallville and Supernatural fanbases.
  • Power Rangers and Super Sentai are two fandoms you'd expect to get into some variation on a Subbing Versus Dubbing brawl. And yet, that does not happen. Both the fans and production crews get along extremely well (to the point that they share sets and props, and for a couple of Super Sentai opening and ending sequences in the past few years, they filmed in New Zealand using the crew for Power Rangers), and forums for one will usually allow discussion of the other...
  • Out of the prominence of both fandoms on tumblr, SuperWho was born.
  • Also thanks to tumblr, we get SuperWholock.
  • Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart seem to both share the same fandom. Makes perfect sense, since Stephen used to work on Jon's show, and they interact frequently. It's almost like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are one show with two different hosts.
  • The Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Generation Kill fandoms, whose fans are collectively known as the "HBO war fandom".
  • The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond take place in similar settings and had frequent crossovers, and thus share largely the same fanbase.
  • Interestingly, Food Network shows generally have a lot of overlap in their fanbases, but not completely. While they are largely friendly towards one another, one celebrity chef's fans will often complain that several others on the same network are "too grating" or annoying.
  • There is generally a lot of overlap between fans of TNT's original shows.
  • Star Trek fans are known for their running feuds with fans of other Sci-fi series/franchises; notable rivals being Star Wars, Babylon 5, and Doctor Who. But it seems there's a lot of warm regard, if not necessarily love, for fans of the televised Stargate shows especially Stargate SG-1. As different as the shows are, their similar takes on military science fiction/Space Opera and comparable places on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism naturally means they'd appeal to a similar group. Also, it's clear the producers of Gate pay homage, if ribbingly, to Trek. To top it off, throw in the number of Trek actors who've would up on one or the other Gate series and it's almost impossible to see this fandoms as rivals.
  • Star Trek and 24 fandoms got pretty cozy what with all the former (and sometimes current) Trek actors appearing in the show in big and large parts. The connection was especially strong with Star Trek: Enterprise which saw Gregorty Itzin and Peter Weller doing both shows at the same time. (Itzin as President Logan on 24 while playing an alternate universe Starfleet Admiral on Enterprise. Peter Weller portrayed a Well-Intentioned Extremist on both shows!) The biggest connection was when Show Runner Manny Coto left Enterprise after it was cancelled and became a producer on 24.

Music

Professional Sports

  • New York metro area baseball and football fans generally divide in the following way: fans of the New York Yankees baseball team generally are also fans of the New York Giants football team, and vice versa; meanwhile, the Mets baseball fans are generally also fans of the New York Jets football team. The intra-city fandom rivalry between the Yankees and Mets and the intra-stadium rivalry between the Giants and Jets helps add to this, as does the fact that before Giants Stadium was built, the Yankees gave the Giants a home at Yankee Stadium, while the Mets played host to the Jets.
    • It should also be noted that the Yankees/Giants fans and the Mets/Jets fans in New York City are generally united in their mutual love for the New York Knicks basketball team. However, the Yankees/Giants and Mets/Jets fans in NEW JERSEY often root for the New Jersey Nets basketball team. Mets/Jets fans in Jersey who support the Nets, often proudly proclaim their love for "Mets, Jets, and Nets!"
    • Also, Yankees/Giants fans tend to root for the Rangers hockey team, and Mets/Jets fans support the Islanders.

Theatre

  • In the Wicked section it's almost heresy not to have seen Rent or at least know the basic plot. It's probably something to do with the large number of shared actors especially Idina Menzel but there have been Wicked actors playing Rent, Rent actors playing Wicked, crazy crossovers, songfics with songs from the other musical and just odd references in fics.

Video Games

Web Comics

Web Original

  • The two superhero parody shared universes of the early days of the Internet, Superguy and Legion of Net.Heroes. At least back when Superguy was active. They shared a couple of important writers in common, such as Mike Escutia and Dave Van Domelen.

Western Animation

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Friendly_Fandoms?oldid=2053036"