[Media Talk] Twitter has decided to show me superhero comic book discourse, despite my negative interest in superhero comics, but it got me thinking

And that is about media that span multiple mediums

Like there was a lot of "wow fans today don't know character x was y (in a run that started in 1980 and lasted like 1 year)" with comments about how people aren't true fans if they don't read the comics or whatever

and it's actually made me realize how much superheros have expanded beyond comics and that to me, it's not really accurate to call them solely a comic thing now

even before the advent of the MCU, there are people who knew of, say, Batman only through Batman: The Animated Series

And that it's possible to be a fan of characters like Batman without ever picking up a comic book

for a non comics example of this kind of thing, the first thing that immediately comes to mind is Pokémon, which is a gigahuge video game franchise, yet there are people who are primarily fans of the anime, which is very different from the games despite sharing the same premise and setting

My parents are both Pokémon fans (even if my dad will deny it) and they interact with the franchise solely through Pokémon go

As for me, how many episodes of Hamtaro have I watched? Like one and a half, but that doesn't stop Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak from being one of my favorite Gameboy Advance games of all time

If you say you are a Yu-Gi-Oh! fan do you mean the anime? Which anime? Or are you talking about the card game.

Anyway the point of all this was just me thinking about how a franchise can have very different, but all equally important and popular and valid ways to engage with it.

Yes

In my experience many comics fans (primarily cishet men) are so fucking invested in gatekeeping

Like to a really baffling degree