this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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I just think they're neat!
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You don’t have to have blind devotion to something to be a fan of it. I don’t like new Pokémon but still am a fan of the first 3 generations. I’m a fan of the office but I don’t watch after season 7.
Fan was originally short for fanatic, so it does actually imply blind devotion. Etymologically at least.
You know I will.
Curiously "cake" apparently comes from old Norse "kaka", which in many languages is the word for poo-poo, but is more probably related to roundness in this instance.
Thank god language evolves so that now a fan is someone interested in a thing
For the time being you will have to live with implying blind devotion when using the word "fan" to describe something other than an air circulation tool, since it was recently used in that fashion and sometimes still is. So even if you prefer the descriptive approach to linguistics this meaning is still relevant.
Side note, purely descriptive linguistics strike me as madness. I mean if the purpose of language is communication then constantly changing the definitions is kind of antithetical to that. Texts would become illegible in decades rather than centuries.
It evolved through the years. The actual fanatics who don't accept any criticism for their favorite show/movie/actor/singer/whatever tend to be labeled as stans. At least IME.
IME that meaning of "stan" is way younger than I am. I remember it just being a name. And I remember "fan" being used in the way "stan" is now, so I sometimes still use it like that.
> OldManYellingAtClouds.jpg
Recently I was wondering if I could apply that reasoning to Game of Thrones. I haven't watched it since that trainwreck of an ending.
One of the few endings that was so utterly awful it retroactively tainted my perception of the first solid 4-5 seasons.
Probably also the reason the book series will never get finished now :>
It's such a shame, because it was so fun for a while. It was culturally dominant in a way no fantasy TV show has ever been.
And died so cataclysmically like no other media I've ever seen.
Lost was good for a season and a half or so. If they would have kept the story moving instead of filling in fluff just for episodes and longevity, it could have had the same impact.
For me that show ends when the wall falls. The white walkers win, humanity is over.
I like it. The whole thing is a tragedy about bickering over petty human power-struggles while eventually being overtaken by the problem you should have been working together against. Bring Peter Dinklage back in to narrate something to that effect over the scenes of the whitewalkers rampaging. Series sort of salvaged.
So climate change?
Summer is coming.
There's a fan edit called Game of Thrones Redeemed. Apparently it fixes that trainwreck into something reasonably satisfying, although I've not seen it yet.
I have friends who utterly refuse to acknowledge the last episode of Farscape. If it never happens for them, they can assume the adventures go on indefinitely.
Did they watch The Peacekeeper Wars after finishing the show? Because it does help.