Can fans ruin a character for you?

[Sage Ninja]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Naw, if anything it would make me stand up and defend the character.

The only way fans can change my mind is if they point out actual facts about the character in-story that might change my perspective, but I usually notice anything there it to notice about a character anyway.

That is actually a pretty mature way to go about things. I am not usually bothered by people fan boying/girling over a character though even at it's mildest it can be annoying. It's just when they get nasty with how much they like a character that they start bashing other characters who come up against them when narratively they are in the wrong. I have seen some fans perform impressive mental gymnastics to woobify their favorite. I am over how Loki from the Marvel Thor movies get the woobie treatment.

I tend to avoid fan groups, especially the larger communities. (...) Maybe I'm too easily influenced, but I think there's only so much negative association you can have for something before it overwhelms your natural impression.

I am starting to feel the same way about interacting with fandoms myself. I used to enjoy interacting with fandoms in discussion boards, there was often so much good stuff the talk about and speculate. That's what this board the technodrome has been such a great place to be on. But over that last several years I just don't feel as much enjoyment from being in fan circles. Fans more than ever before have become more likely to fixate on a single character and play them up as the best thing ever to the point that they froth at the mouth that the narrative doesn't solely focus on them (especially if they aren't even the main character). This place is honestly one of the very few places I still visit to engage with media that I enjoy besides youtube. I stay the hell away from Twitter, Tumblr and reddit for the most part because those places are so extreme.

Kind of. Fangirls fangirling out for Daryl on Walking Dead already had me predisposed to dislike him... and then as the show went on I realized I was absolutely right to dislike him.

I never watched the Walking Dead but I know Daryl is super popular. Steven Yeun's character Glenn is the character that I thought was super popular, my sister really likes him and from I have seen he is a great character that deserves the adoration he gets.

I hate to admit this but the way fan girls in particular gush over certain character, especially male characters can REALLY turn me off on a character. I hate that it it has become a knee jerk reaction of irritation for me because there is male character that I despised initially when I was getting into Tangled the series because of how rabid and obnoxious this particular male character's fan girls were. And I found myself predisposed to dislike him based off how feral his fans were, I also came into the series in the middle of season 2 and only watched the last couple of episodes of season 1 that puts that character in a bad light. And I feel bad now, because when I watched the series from beginning to end and saw the plot beats and character interactions in it's proper context (especially in season 1) I found that I actually liked this character and realized that I allowed how his fan girls feral devotion to him turn me against him before I even gave in him a chance. I realized how immature that was of me. I didn't even give this character a chance at first because I was so put off by fans at first.